"You disturb me in my work. You ride ruthlessly through the plans of battle and campaign my textbooks show, and make sixes and sevens of them. At sight of you the heaviest lines of battle dissolve into thin air and into mist the fastest fortress falls. At the coming thought of you brigades and armies melt away, and your face stands out a radiant evangel of peace, the very thought even of wars and turbulences dispelling.... What am I to do? I cannot chain myself to study the science of strife when this heavenly vision is calling me—and it is ever calling—to love and love only.... I am fully persuaded there is only one thing worth thinking on in all the earth—and that is you." * * * * * His wife’s letters were all that mortal man could desire, but only the more distracting for all that. They were always short, but grew in warmth as the sense of freedom grew upon the writer. Hayward devoured them with increasing hunger, and with the ever-recurring, never varying signature, "Your wife," spark upon spark of impatience was enkindled with his love. Finally he must of very necessity have some vent for his restlessness. He sought diversion in the society of Lily Porter. In fact he could with difficulty avoid her: she too had set her heart on an army wedding. Hayward had only the very kindliest of purposes toward Lily. He had continued his correspondence with her during the summer. For the sake of his plans unfolded to her in their last meeting before his going away he could not break abruptly away from her—though the task of remaining on friendly terms and yet not proceeding with the suit so nearly openly avowed was a serious tax upon his resources and ingenuity. In his apprehension "the fury of a woman scorned" loomed fearful and threatening. The object of his apprehensions, on the other hand, while she felt rather than saw the subtle change in him, was yet flattered by his unaccustomed submissiveness to her caprices and experienced delightful thrills of expectancy as she waited for a trembling confession to crown his new-found humility. "Lily," her father had said to her on a morning after one of Hayward’s scattered visits, "I tol’ you once to drop that feller and I hoped you’d done it. Understan’ I don’ want any footman comin’ here. We ain’t in that class. You ought to have mo’ respec’ for yourse’f. What you want with a servant hangin’ roun’ you when you can take your pick of the professional men in town, I can’t see." "Don’t worry about me, papa," the girl sang as she danced over to the piano, "I’ll wed a military-tary man." "Well, thank Heaven you ain’t got no idee of marryin’ that Hayward. I’ll make it wuth while for you to marry a professional or a military man either one, but none of my money for a footman, I tell you now." "No footman for me either, papa. I’ll not marry a footman, I promise you. I tell you I’m thinking of a military man."