One day, however, she would seem not quite so gay as common, but with a haze of thought about those eyes, which of late--with the General strong and above the need of drugs--had danced and sparkled. Peg had brought me a posy of flowers for my desk. “Are they not beautiful?” she asked. “I love the flowers; so sweet, so contented on their stems among the leaves! Are they not beautiful?” “And how will I see flowers while you are in the place?” said I. This was to cure her out of her sadness, which, for all her words about the flowers, hung over her face like a mist. “Now, see how well you said that!” cried Peg, brightening a little and turning me her droll look. “Was it prepared? Was it spontaneous? Really, slave, were you to go on like that for a year, or say for two, my hope might revive over you.” This lightly, and to step off her tongue with foot of air. Then, for my bewilderment beyond hope, she without warning breaks into tears. And next, to be a cap-sheaf on my shocked amazement, she gives me this at the door, to which she cries her way blindly: “My husband will be home to-night!” And with that she leaves me helplessly to wonder was there ever born upon this earth, to be a beautiful woman and turn folk mad, such another confusing tangle as this Peg of ours! CHAPTER X--THE MAJOR AND PEG AT CROSSES Next morning I went straight into the midst of my correspondence and began tossing it on my pen as husbandmen toss hay. There rang no unusual call for this energy of ink, but the whole truth was that, flying like a fugitive before pursuing thoughts of Peg--I may tell you they had a fine dance about my pillow the night before!--I would make a refuge of my work. Long ago I had given up the hope of solving Peg in her vagaries. One would never know where or when or how to lay hold on her, for she came to one new and new each day. Wayward, erratic, now fierce and now tender, now in laughter and now in tears, one might not count on her moods in their direction more than on the flight of birds. The one only thing one might be sure of concerning Peg was that one was sure of nothing.