“This is no time, my own love, for false delicacy or womanish etiquette! I cannot possibly leave you here exposed to the terrible dangers that are impending over the city! In revolutions, my Elfie, the innocent are sacrificed with the guilty! I cannot leave you here, exposed to the horrors of the coming days! I must make you my wife; take you with me to Virginia, and leave you under the protection of my widowed mother! She is alone, Elfie! She has no other son but myself, and no daughter at all! She will receive my beloved wife as a dear daughter, my Elfie! Come! what say you, my own? Do not avert your head! Let me see your sweet face! Turn toward me! smile on me. Oh, my Elfie! make me happy!” “Oh! Leave me! Leave me! Leave me!” she exclaimed, in a passion of indignation, as she started up, flung off his hand, and walked across the room. This time he heard her, understood her, and gazed upon her in astonishment, incredulity and agitation. “Elfrida! is this acting? Or is it real madness? What do you mean?” he exclaimed, going toward her. “Keep off!” she said, so shortly, so curtly, so sternly, that he stopped suddenly, like a man on the brink of a precipice. “Tell me what you mean by this, Elfie!” he cried. “What I mean by this! I mean to be true to my country! Next to my duty to God, I rank my duty to my country! And I will be faithful to her; though my heart should break in its fidelity?!” passionately exclaimed Elfie. “Your native State is your country! To her alone is your allegiance due. She is about to secede from the Union; and she has a right to do so. And it is your duty to go with your State!” “I deny that a State has any right to secede from the Union! Set up that doctrine, and see where it would end!—in the utter dissolution and death of our country; for if a State has a right to secede from the Union, a country has the same right to secede from a State; and a township to secede from a county; and a farm from a township; and the barn from the farm; and the husband from the wife, and the child from the father!—and there you have disintegration and anarchy! Bosh! preach State’s Rights not to me!” “Elfie!” answered the Secessionist, hotly, “I am willing to admit your capacity for understanding the construction of a dress or a dinner; but I doubt your ability for comprehending the Constitution of the United States.” “Gammon! The Constitution of the United States is written in just about the plainest English that I have ever read, and I claim to understand my mother tongue!” “Elfie, you cannot mean to turn traitor to your native State!” exclaimed Albert Goldsborough. “No! I do not mean to turn traitor to my native State, or native country, or native farm! or to my pap or to my two unks. In being true to the whole Union, I am true to every part of the Union, and to every citizen thereof.”