"I don't know but that I shall have to come to that. But I will give you no answer that leaves you at an advantage. Ask me to stay--command me to stay, if that suits you better--and I will see how it sounds. Come, you must not trifle with a man." He still held Adela's hand, and they had been looking frankly into each other's eyes. He paused, waiting for an answer. "Good-by, Mr. Ludlow," said Adela. "God bless you!" And she was about to withdraw her hand; but he held it. "Are we friends?" said he. Adela gave a little shrug of her shoulders. "Friends of three hours." Ludlow looked at her with some sternness. "Our parting could at best hardly have been sweet," said he; "but why should you make it bitter, Miss Moore?" "If it's bitter, why should you try to change it?" "Because I don't like bitter things." Ludlow had caught a glimpse of the truth--that truth of which the reader has had a glimpse--and he stood there at once thrilled and annoyed. He had both a heart and a conscience. "It's not my fault," he cried to the latter; but he was unable to add, in all consistency, that it was his misfortune. It would be very heroic, very poetic, very chivalric, to lose his steamer, and he felt that he could do so for sufficient cause--at the suggestion of a fact. But the motive here was less than a fact--an idea; less than an idea--a fancy. "It's a very pretty little romance as it is," he said to himself. "Why spoil it? She is an admirable girl: to have learned that is enough for me." He raised her hand to his lips, pressed them to it, dropped it, reached the door and bounded out of the garden gate. The day was ended. IV A MOST EXTRAORDINARY CASE Late in the spring of the year 1865, just as the war had come to a close, a young invalid officer lay in bed in one of the uppermost chambers of one of the great New York hotels. His meditations were interrupted by the entrance of a waiter, who handed him a card superscribed _Mrs. Samuel Mason_, and bearing on its reverse the following words in pencil: "Dear Colonel Mason, I have only just heard of your being here, ill and alone. It's too dreadful. Do you remember me? Will you see me? If you do, I think you _will_ remember me. I insist on coming up. M. M." Mason was undressed, unshaven, weak, and feverish. His ugly little hotel chamber was in a state of confusion which had not even the merit of being picturesque. Mrs. Mason's card was at once a puzzle and a heavenly intimation of comfort. But all that it represented was so dim to the young man's enfeebled perception that it took him some moments to collect his thoughts. "It's a lady, sir," said the waiter, by way of assisting him. "Is she young or old?" asked Mason. "Well, sir, she's a little of both." "I can't ask a lady to come up here," groaned the invalid.