"Oh, no!" The soldier sheathed his sacred weapon. "Say justice, liberty, the rights of man; the things our United States ought to stand for." Then the light heart in him laughed; and Concrete and Abstract blessed each other. Happy and silent, they lingered on the brow of the pine copse; a breeze sprang up; vast and gorgeous sky-colors spread and deepened. The Sergeant's uplifted face was fixed upon his betrothed. She seemed to dissolve away before him, or before him, rather, to be vivified and set free. Slowly between her and him, transubstantiating her touching beauty, gathered a solemn, changeful, wavering cloud-splendor of ivory, rose, and sapphire, gathered out of the land of myths into recognized and unforgotten fact. For a quarter of an hour he endured that mystical glory; then his head dropped forward on her knees. A thing seen was yet upon him: once more Our Lady of the Union, but with a smile as if of one assured at last of ransom, and ineffably content. When Cecily touched him, wondering, he shuddered, and brushed an imagined film from his eyes. She sat there, innocent of any magic, unaware in what potter's hand her spirit was so much fine clay. From the depths of the vale the croak of frogs arose, faint here and shriller there, then long-drawn and general: ever a most mournful, homesick, and foreboding sound to our armies in the South. The distant camp seemed ominously quiet; but on the outskirts of it was a dissolving shadow, a moving dark clot, there, a moment back, between them and the scarce-fluttering flag, and still there, now that the flag was hauled down, its bright hues effaced against the more vivid evening air. Presently the group of men, for such it was, scattered. Cecily's keen sight read what was written afar; the familiar figure of the one-armed brisk Lieutenant-Colonel in the saddle coming towards the hill, with others following on the gallop behind. "You are needed," she said without preamble; "you must go to them." With emphasis and authority, slight and quick, yet irrevocable, she spoke. He turned about, and sprang to his feet from his enchantment at her side; for the divine day, the Sergeant's field-day, was over. "Is this the way of women, or only your way? You send me from you on a supposition, a scruple," he answered, plaintively. "Go." She repeated it softly, and with closed eyes, lest she should look upon her own heart-break. "It is unnecessary, as you know," he replied; "but if you make it a point of honor, I am glad to obey." He held out his hands, and she took them, cherishing, steadfast, as in a pact. Her voice and step were strangely unsteady; they held up the mirror, as it were, to his. What was there in a commonplace incident to move them so to the depth? In a passionate presentiment, he drew her closer to him. "Are we to be given to each other only that we may be severed, and suffer the more? What if the end should be now? Cecily!"