She sang. Rand watched her from the distance--the hands and the white arm seen behind the gold strings, the slender figure in a gown of filmy white, the warm, bare throat pouring melody, the face that showed the soul within. All the room watched her as she sang,-- "Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage; Minds innocent and quiet take That for a hermitage." Through the window came the sound of rain, the smell of wet box and of damask roses. Now and then the lightning flashed, showing the garden and the white bloom of locust trees. "Minds innocent and quiet take That for a hermitage." Rand's heart ached with passionate longing, passionate admiration. He thought that the voice to which he listened, the voice that brooded and dreamed, for all that it was so angel-sweet, would reach him past all the iron bars of time or of eternity. He thought that when he came to die he would wish to die listening to it. The voice sang to him like an angel voice singing to Ishmael in the wilderness. The song came to an end, but after a moment Jacqueline sang again, sonorous and passionate words of a lover to his mistress. It was not now the Cavalier hymning of constancy; it was the Elizabethan breathing passion, and his cry was the more potent. "The thirst that from the soul doth rise Doth ask a drink divine"-- Blinding lightning, followed by a tremendous crash, startled the singer from her harp and brought all in the room to their feet. "That struck!" exclaimed the Colonel. "Look out, Fairfax, and see if 't was the stables! I hear the dogs howling. "'Twas the big pine by the gate, I think, sir," answered Fairfax Cary, half in and half out of the window. "Gad! it is black!" "You two cannot go home to-night," cried Colonel Churchill, with satisfaction. "And here's Cato with the decanters! We might have a hand at Loo--eh, Unity? you and Fairfax, Ned Hunter and I.--The card-table, Cato!" The four sat down, the card-table being so placed as to quite divide Jacqueline and Ludwell Cary, at the harp, from Major Edward's small table and Rand beside the sofa. "Edward!" said the Colonel. His brother nodded, gathered up his cards, and turned squarely to the entertainment of the Republican. "So, Mr. Rand, Mr. Monroe goes to Spain! What the Devil is he going to do there? I wish that your party, sir, would send Mr. Madison to Turkey and Colonel Burr to the Barbary States! And what, may I ask, are you going to do with the Mississippi now that you've got it? It's a damned expensive business buying from Buonaparte. Sixty millions for a _casus belli_! That's what you have paid, and that's what you have acquired, sir!" "I don't think you can be certain that it's a _casus belli_, sir--" "Sir," retorted the Major, "I may not know much, but what I know, I know damned well! You cry peace, but there'll be no peace. There'll be war, sir, war, war, war!"