“Yes, watch-dog,” Peg continued dreamily, “there will come another life.” Then of the suddenest twining her arms about my neck more tightly still and until she clung there like a part of me, she cried out as though her soul spoke: “Kiss me, sweetheart; kiss me, if it be but once. This night at least is ours.” It was she who would command. I grew drunken on her lips while my thoughts would stray and stagger. I could know nothing, act nothing, be nothing save as she would have me. Her hot arms were as the arms of summer torrents to hurry me along; her lips were like the lips of a whirlpool! It was a kiss--a kiss of the infinite--and would lay its velvet touch upon the ultimate reason of existence. And so Peg went away; and for my portion I took up my old life, which now was as dark and chill and hollow as a cave. Now what should there be more to tell? What matters it how secession hid its head? or how Calhoun resigned his Vice-Presidency to later creep back to a seat in that Senate where he had sat on high and ruled? or how the General fought and slew the Bank? Who is there to care for the story of the General's re-election, when Van Buren came with him for the second place? Who, I say, would bend the ear of interest to such tales as those when now our Peg was gone? The General never again took up with me that matter of his Cabinet and its dissolution, and how he scattered it to save Peg from herself. One evening, however, as he smoked and I sat bitter and listless, I plumped a question at him. “If it were to save Peg from Peg,” said I, “why did you defer so long? Why did not you disperse your Cabinet months before? Or was it that you failed to note Peg's peril of herself till just before you acted?” This last with a great sneer. “It was plain to me from the beginning how Peg was won to you,” said he. “Then, in the beginning why did not you act?” “How could I? Peg was under fire for her fair repute. Had I broken up my Cabinet, it would have been Peg's death blow. Folk would have told how it was for the war upon her and because she could not be defended. No, I must give her time for triumph; that achieved, the rest might happen and she be made secure in Florida. It was the one trail, and I followed it.” The General came over to my chair. “Old comrade,” said he with a world of goodness in his manner, “if I have thrust a thorn in your heart, forgive me. If friendship can cure, that thorn will be plucked away.” On another day the General was in a temper for abstract philosophies. It lay in a hot time of summer and his moods flowed lazily. His fancy would run away to the topic of woman and her helplessness.