It was the inimical, remote, icy superiority of her tone that nettled me--perhaps her implied assumption that I would not know it for such. But also I felt curiously stricken by that swift withdrawal of her confidence, for Mrs. Caroline Lansdale had won me by her laugh and blush of ancient girlishness. Further, I would not now be hurt by any woman, though she were ten times my years, without a show of defence. I arose as Clem hastily fled from the room. "Miss Caroline--" I waited for the fine little brows to go up at that. I had not long to wait. "I shall positively never call you anything else but Miss Caroline while you permit me to address you at all--understand it--I've associated with your boy too long. Well, I did do four years of fighting, and I was mustered out with the rank of Major. You might as well know it now as later. You'll have longer to forget it. I wish I could forget it myself. Not the fact, for I should fight again as long and try to fight harder in the same cause, but the hellishness of it--the damnable, inhuman obscenity of it--I should like to forget. I never said so before, Miss Caroline,--there was no one to say it to,--but it made me old before my time. Why, I could almost be a son of yours, if you will pardon that minor brutality, and the thing is aging me to this day. I helped to kill your young men and your old men, but you ought to know that I didn't do it for holiday sport. The first one of your men I saw dead lay alone by the roadside, a boy, foolishly young, with a tired face that was still smiling. He'd fallen there as if sleep had overtaken him on the march. Our column had halted, and I went to him. It must have taken a full minute for me to realize that this was dignified war and not the murder of a boy in a homely gray uniform. When I did realize it, I was so weakened that I broke down and cried. I was a private then. I covered his face, and got up strong enough to assault two other privates who had found my snivelling funny. One of them went to the field hospital, and I went under arrest when I'd finished with the other. You ought to know, Miss Caroline, that the sight of thousands of your other dead never moved me to any merriment. I tried to be a good soldier, but I felt the death pains of every fallen man I saw. I didn't stop to note the color of his uniform. Miss Caroline--" I waited until I had made her look at me. "The war is over, you know. Suppose you forget me as a soldier and take me as a man. Really, I believe we ought to know each other better." Clem had once found occasion to say, "When Miss Cahline tek th' notion to shine huh eyes up, she sho' is a highly illuminous puhsonality."