"He's doing all he can now to spite him!" "So General Beauregard says--the conceit of it! This little general but yesterday a captain to dare to say that the President who had honored him with such high command would sacrifice the country and injure himself just to spite the man he has promoted!" "That will do, Jennie," the Senator commanded. "Women don't understand politics!" "Thank God I don't understand that kind. I just know enough to be loyal to my Chief, when our life and his may depend on it--" With a stamp of his heavy foot the Senator ended the discussion by leaving the room. Jennie smiled sweetly as she extended her hand to Socola. "I hope you were not alarmed, Signor. We never fight--" "The President of the Confederacy is a very fortunate leader, Miss Jennie--" "Why?" "He has invincible champions--" The girl blushed. "I'm afraid we don't know much. We just feel things." "I think sometimes we only _know_ that way--" He paused and looked at her hat with a gesture of dismay. "You're not going out?" "I must," she said apologetically. "I've bought a whole carriage load of peaches and grapes. I went to the Alabama hospital yesterday with a little basket full and made some poor fellows glad. They gave out too quickly. Those who got none looked so wistfully at me as I passed out. I couldn't sleep last night. For hours and hours their deep-sunken eyes followed and haunted me with their pleading. And so I've got a whole load to take to-day. You'll go with me--won't you?" He had come to declare his love and make this beautiful girl his conquest. She was ending the day by making him her lackey and errand boy. It couldn't be helped. There was no mistaking the tones of her voice. She would certainly go. The only way to be with her was to dance attendance on wounded Confederate soldiers. It was all in the day's work. Many a scout engulfed in the ranks of his enemy must charge his own men to save his life. He would not only make the best of it, he would take advantage of it to press his way a step closer to her heart. "Are all of the girls of the South like you, Miss Jennie?" he asked with a quizzical smile. "You mean insulting to their fathers?" she laughed. "If you care to put it so--I mean, is their loyalty to the Confederacy a mania?" "Is mine a mania?" "Perhaps I should say a divine passion--are all your Southern women thus inspired?" "Yes." "In the far South and the West?" "Everywhere!" "It's wonderful." "Perhaps because we can't fight we try to make up for it." He watched her keenly. "It's something bigger than that. Somehow it's a prophecy to me of a new future--a new world. Maybe after all political wisdom shall not begin and end with man." Jennie blushed again under the admiring gaze with which Socola held her.