"Hush; go to bed, Honey-bell. Everybody is asleep. How pale you are, Curt--dearest--dearest----" The rear room was Ailsa's; she walked into it and dropped down on the bed in the darkness. The door between the rooms closed: she sat perfectly still, her eyes were wide open, staring in front of her. Queer little luminous shapes danced through obscurity like the names from the kerosene torches around the bulletin; her ears still vibrated with the hoarse alarm of the voices; through her brain sounded her brother-in-law's words about Steve, repeated incessantly, stupidly. Presently she began to undress by sense of touch. The gas in the bathroom was lighted; she completed her ablutions, turned it off, and felt her way back to the bed. Lying there she became aware of sounds from the front room. Celia was still awake; she distinguished her voice in quick, frightened exclamation; then the low murmur continued for a while, then silence fell. She raised herself on one elbow; the crack of light under the door was gone; there was no sound, no movement in the house except the measured tick of the hall clock outside, tic-toc!--tic-toc!--tic-toc! And she had been lying there a long, long while, eyes open, before she realised that the rhythm of the hall clock was but a repetition of a name which did not concern her in any manner: "Berk-ley!--Berk-ley!--Berk-ley!" How it had crept into her consciousness she could not understand; she lay still, listening, but the tic-toc seemed to fit the syllables of his name; and when, annoyed, she made a half disdainful mental attempt to substitute other syllables, it proved too much of an effort, and back into its sober, swinging rhythm slipped the old clock's tic-toe, in wearisome, meaningless repetition: "Berk-ley!--Berk-ley!--Berk-ley!" She was awakened by a rapping at her door and her cousin's imperative voice: "I want to talk to you; are you in bed?" She drew the coverlet to her chin and called out: "Come in, Steve!" He came, tremendously excited, clutching the _Herald_ in one hand. "I've had enough of this rebel newspaper!" he said fiercely. "I don't want it in the house again, ever. Father says that the marine news makes it worth taking, but----" "What on earth are you trying to say, Steve?" "I'm trying to tell you that we're at war! War, Ailsa! Do you understand? Father and I've had a fight already----" "What?" "They're still firing on Sumter, I tell you, and if the fort doesn't hold out do you think I'm going to sit around the house like a pussy cat? Do you think I'm going to business every day as though nothing was happening to the country I'm living in? I tell you now--you and mother and father--that I'm not built that way----" Ailsa rose in bed, snatched the paper from his grasp, and leaning on one arm gazed down at the flaring head-lines: THE WAR BEGUN Very Exciting News from Charleston Bombardment of Fort Sumter Commenced