you were nearly fifty years ago!"

Seventeen. Young, vivid, brilliant, beautiful. Yes, beautiful! Nothing
is so beautiful as youth, and she had much more than youth. The gods had
been good to her up to then, and then they taunted her, made spring in
her heart love for one only--love that must be crushed and killed, for
the man who alone could inspire it wore the hated blue, was there to
fight against her people, and never must she marry him, she told
herself. On a visit North she had met him, and it was a whim of fate
that he should be captain of one of the companies taking possession of
Yorkburg, with headquarters in the Roy house, next to her own. A whim of
fate! Friend and foe they met daily, and battle was never waged more
hotly than was theirs. On his part, determination that never yields. On
hers, pride that never surrenders. And then one day there was a change
of orders. His regiment was sent away and to battle. Lest the horror,
the terror of it all undo her, she had bid him go, refused to promise in
the years to come she would ever be his wife, and the look on his fine,
brave face had followed her through life.

A month later he was brought back and by her order to her house.
Fatally wounded, in delirium her name was ever on his lips, but in
his eyes blankness. And on her knees by his bed she had twisted in an
agony of prayer that for one moment, but one moment, light might come
into them that she might pray for pardon ere he died. But no light
came and he died, not knowing that for her love, too, was dead.

Again Miss Gibbie stirred, for again she seemed to see herself. This
time she was by an open grave. White, rigid, erect, she watched with
tearless eyes the lowering, not of a mere body in the ground, but the
burying of all youth has the right to ask of life. Out of the future