She lingered over the thought a moment and a fond smile curved her lips. “Yes, I’m sure he would, and I wouldn’t have to be a mistress of slaves. But that isn’t the whole of it. He told me once, and it’s been in all his letters, how wrapped up he is in the interests of the South. And that means slavery. It’s his own section and what they think are their rights, against all the rest of us and against freedom, and eternal right, and the upward progress of the world. We’d still be just as much divided and opposed to each other as ever.” The memory returned to her of her father sitting at his desk, his face drawn with sadness and sadness in his voice, as she had seen him on that evening in the previous autumn when she had asked if her mother could not be told what they were doing. She shivered a little. “No, I shouldn’t like to think of my husband feeling like that, knowing that he couldn’t tell me of his dearest hopes and plans and ambitions, and feel sure of my sympathy. No, that wouldn’t be being married, really married.” A little longer she sat with her chin in her hand and stared at the open door of the tiny room. Her face gradually took on a stern expression that made it, notwithstanding its youthful smoothness, curiously like her father’s. “No,” she said aloud as she rose, “it can’t be. It’s just as impossible still as it has been all the time--even if I did think for a little while--” Her face suddenly melted into tenderness and her voice sank to a whisper. “It was a lovely dream while it lasted, and I’m glad--it didn’t do anybody, not even me, any harm, and I’m glad--yes, I’m glad--I had it!” The little lines at the corners of her mouth deepened, her upper lip lifted, and her flashing smile lit up her countenance and shone in her eyes. “It’s almost like looking back on having been married for a little while!” she thought. CHAPTER XVIII “Rhoda,” called Mrs. Ware from the veranda steps, “will you come here, please?” Rhoda was standing between the rows of lilac that hedged the walk to the front gate, inspecting the swelling buds and saying to herself with pleasure that they looked as if they would bloom early that year. The lilac was her best-loved flower and these two lines of bushes had been planted because of her pleading, ten years before. Every season she watched anxiously for the buds to show sign of returning life, and Charlotte declared that after they began to swell she measured them with a tape line every day to mark their growth. When they bloomed she kept bowls of the flowers all over the house and was rarely without a spray in her hair or her dress.