Désirée parted the mat of ivy and watched with Edward from the mouth of the cave. “The twenty-ninth!” he said. “It is, I think, the beginning of the end. I doubt if we can hold out another week.” She sat on the earth beside him, her head against the pillow. Lip and ear must be near together; at any distance the blast carried the voice away. “The beginning of the end.... You think General Johnston will not come?” “How can he? I saw the force that he had. It is not possible. He is right in refusing to play the dare-devil or to sacrifice for naught. He should have been listened to in the beginning.” “And we cannot cut our way out?” “Evacuate? How many could march ten miles? No. Troy’s down—Troy’s down!” “Richmond is Troy.” “... That is true. Then this is one of the small Asian towns.” Without the ivy sprays there was a red and awful light. They saw the world as by calcium. The stars were put out, but the flashes burnished the piled battle clouds. Bronze and copper and red gleamed the turreted fierce clouds. Below were now sharply shown, now hidden, the Vicksburg lines, the heaped, earthen front. Redan and redoubt and lunette and the long ragged rifle-pits between,—now they showed and now the smoke drove between. “It repeats and repeats,” said Edward. “Life’s a labyrinth, and the clue broke at the beginning.” “Love is the clue.” “Love like ours? There must be many kinds of love.” “Yes. But love in all its degrees. From love of thought to love of the snake that I saw again to-day. Love in all its degrees casting out hate in all its degrees. Love that lives and lets live. Love that is wise.” “Is it always wise?” “It can be made so. All other clues will break like packthread.” The light grew intenser. Houses in the town had been set afire. Air and earth shook, all the heavy, buried strings vibrated. Sound rolled against the ear like combers of a sea, deep, terrific, with a ground swell, with sudden, wild accesses as when world navies are wrecked. The smell of powder smoke gathered, familiar, familiar, familiar! Marching feet were heard, going down to the lines—the City Guard probably, called to come and help. “Packthread,” said Edward. “All this to break like packthread and go out like flaming tow.... Love and Thought the sole weavers of relations. Love and Thought the related and the relation....”