She stood regarding the Colonel with that contradictory uplook of her faded blue eyes which was pathetic, and that tilt of her nose which was offensive, with her lips primped tight after the manner of a woman who is getting ready to wash behind the ears of a small boy. She always put the Colonel in this class when she looked at him, and he resented it. He resented it now by removing his Kentucky Colonel straw hat and glaring his bow at her, as if that was a concession he made to his own dignity, not to her. "Good afternoon, Colonel Adams! Well, who are you running from now?" she said by way of seizing his ears. "Madam!" he exclaimed, puffing out his breast, "no man would dare ask such a question! For four years the enemy of my country never saw the back of Marshall Adams--and----" "And you've been retreating ever since," she added. "From what?" he demanded, slowly purpling with impotent rage. "From the Present, from things that are," she answered. "Madam, I'm an old man, I prefer the grandeur of the past to those follies to which you, and women like you, would commit the present." "But there's Selah, she at least belongs to the Present." "Selah belongs to me, thank God!" "She belongs to herself. You are robbing her of her own life." "No woman ever belonged to herself, Madam, especially a young and beautiful woman. She is an ineffable estate which all men buy with love and hold with all the strength they have." "For shame, sir! You are a brigand keeping your daughter in a cave." "My house is not so fine as Selah deserves, but it is not a cave," he retorted, flattening himself sidewise in order to pass. "All the same you are a brigand, robbing your own flesh and blood of life and happiness," she thrust at him as he went by, waddling on herself after the manner of a fat old duck.