"Soul dreams, Elsie, ay, I think I understand," I said. "I too have them—they are the great, unattainable things of our life. Do you know I think that their being unattainable is what makes them great?" She looked up. "If it is worth so much—this unattainable thing—why then does it hurt so?" "Ay, ay, that’s it. It is the things that hurt which count. ’Our sweetest love is always sweetest pain,’" I said, quoting the line of a poem. "Oh," she said, clasping my arm. "You have said it, Jack." I looked at her quickly. "Elsie," I said, "you once told me—do you remember what you said to me and Aunt Lucretia—about your hand being sought in marriage? Is it the same person you now speak of?" "It is Captain Rutherford," she said, her face drawn tensely. I started, angry, flushed. "Elsie, this will never do. Do you love him at all?" "No, Jack, not as compared to the other—the unattainable. Well, I should say about as the difference between a—well—say a star and a little firefly." A dry, fighting anger clinched my throat and I could scarcely speak. I could have throttled Braxton Bragg then! "Tell me, Elsie," I said, controlling my anger and trying to speak calmly, "tell your big brother all." But she was silent, her face turned from me; at last she said, "It is all so strange, Jack; those we love, love us not, and those we do not love want to marry us even if they are not fit to." "Not fit to hold your shoe, let alone your heart," I added angrily. She put her hand over my mouth. "Have I done wrong? Have I said too much? Come, I must go. I see the Colonel waiting for me." I took her by both hands, holding her before me, for I was strangely worried and I wished to know—I looked earnestly into her eyes. "Do you love me, Elsie?" She blushed crimson. In an instant her arms were around my neck. Shamed and stricken with my own thoughtlessness I tore her arms from me. "Elsie, forgive me, you don’t understand!" In reply she gave me one shamed, hurt look and fled up the path. I saw Goff waiting for her. *CHAPTER XIV* *GOD AND A BUTTERFLY* I saw a race for life the other day. It occurred in mid-air in a kingdom not of earth—not of our own; but the air was sweet where the fight was on, and the fields were green, and the woods lay calm and soothing beneath, and the great, kind sun was above. It was the pursuit of a golden-winged butterfly, one of those filmy creatures that is more of sky than of earth, made of rainbow and a rose, of light and a lily’s blossom. It seemed strange to me that this beautiful thing, thrown off from the rim of a rainbow, living on the nectar of a flower, sleeping on the bosom of a nodding lily and floating on the breath of a zephyr, so spiritual it was, should fall under the cruel laws of life, and be forced to fight for its brief but beautiful existence.