Softly she sprang from the bed, paced the floor, went to the window, seemed to look out upon the landscape; but in truth she was looking in upon herself. There she saw a most unaccountable tendency for her judgment--after some long overstrain--momentarily, but all at once, to swoon, collapse, turn upside down like a boy's kite and dart to earth; an impulse--while fancying she was playing the supremely courageous or generous or clever part--suddenly to surrender the key of the situation, the vital point in whatever she might be striving for. "Ah me, ah me! why did I give my parole?" At the close of the next day--"Walter," said the General as the chief-of-staff entered his tent glittering in blue and gold,--"oh, thud devil!--you going to that dance?" XLVI THE DANCE AT GILMER'S All the while that I recount these scenes there come to me soft orchestrations of the old tunes that belonged with them. I am thinking of one just now; a mere potsherd of plantation-fiddler's folk-music which I heard first--and last--in the dance at Gilmer's. Indeed no other so widely recalls to me those whole years of disaster and chaos; the daily shock of their news, crashing in upon the brain like a shell into a roof; wail and huzza, camp-fire, litter and grave; battlefield stench; fiddle and flame; and ever in the midst these impromptu merrymakings to keep us from going stark mad, one and all,--as so many literally did. The Gilmer daughters were fair, but they were only three, and the Gilmers were the sole Unionists in their neighborhood. "Still, a few girls will come," said Charlotte, sparkling first blue and then black at a sparkling captain who said that, after all, the chief-of-staff had decided he couldn't attend. I know she sparkled first blue and then black, for she always did so when she told of it in later days. "They say," responded the captain, "that in this handy little world there are always a few to whom policy is the best honesty; is that the few who will come?" "You are cynical," said Charlotte, "this is only their unarmed way of saving house and home for the brothers to come back to when you are purged out of the land." When the time came there were partners for eight gallants, and the gallants numbered sixteen. They counted off by twos; the evens waited while the odds danced the half of each set, and then the odds waited and cooled, tried to cool, out on the veranda. But when a reel was called the whole twenty-four danced together, while the fiddler (from the contraband camp) improvised exultant words to his electrifying tunes. "O _ladies_ ramble in, Whilst de _beaux_ ramble out, For to guile[1] dat golden _cha--ain._ My _Lawdy!_ it's a sin Fo' a _fiddleh_ not to shout! Miss _Charlotte's_ a-comin' down de _la--ane_!" [Footnote 1: Coil.]