“You are quite mistaken, Rhoda, as to what they meant, or, rather, as to the way in which they meant it. When this nation was created North and South joined in sworn faith to a written contract. That contract recognized the rights of the south in its peculiar, its necessary, institution, and provided for their safeguarding. And now the North is trying to break that sworn faith, to force us out of our constitutional rights. It is not only our property but our honor that is at stake, and we should be craven indeed if we did not resent this combination of despotism and insult! Preston Brooks was right when he said the other day that if Frémont is elected the people of the South ought to march to Washington and seize the archives and the treasury of the government!” She was leaning eagerly forward, her eyes shining, her lips parted, her face, paled by her excitement, vivid with the feeling that had swept her up into the regions where soul and body breathe the elixir of supreme conviction. But when she spoke, breaking in quickly upon his first pause, it was not only the fulness of her belief that thrilled in her low, tense tones. Their lower notes were sweet with the love that burned in her heart. “Oh, Jeff, can’t you see-- Oh, I wish I could make you see that there can be no rights that are founded on wrong.” She paused a moment, her voice on a suspended accent, as she gathered her thoughts together. Delavan’s eyes devoured the fair picture that she made and his heart leaped in response to those sweet notes in her voice. His mind was full of the ideas he had just uttered, tense with the conviction of their truth, and his nerves were thrilling with the emotions they had bred. And this dear girl, leaning toward him with spirit-lit face, as tense with her convictions as he with his, was the embodiment of all that northern feeling and activity which he so much resented, against which he protested with all his force as a base invasion of Southern rights. But, even as his body throbbed with love and admiration for her fairness and sweetness, his spirit yearned toward the loftiness of hers. Ah, they were akin, they were mates, their spirits, even though they were opposed! He recognized in her that same fervency of faith, that same power of devotion to the mind’s ideal, that were bone and sinew of his own temperament. And they were on opposing sides of this vital question--so intensely vital, he felt, to him, to his section, to the nation, to the whole of civilization! If only they were joined in their ideals!