"Come," said the girl lightly. "I wish you to meet the most wonderful woman in Richmond. She's in charge of this hospital--" Socola laughed skeptically. "I've already seen the most wonderful woman in Richmond, Miss Jennie--" "But she _is_--really--the most wonderful woman in all the South--I think in the world--Mrs. Arthur Hopkins--" "Really?" "She has done what no man ever has anyhow--sold all her property for two hundred thousand dollars and given it to the Confederacy. And not satisfied with giving all she had--she gave herself." Socola followed the girl in silence into the little office of the hospital and found himself gasping with astonishment at the sight of the delicate woman who extended her hand in friendly greeting. She was so perfect an image of his own mother it was uncanny--the same straight, firm mouth, the strong, intellectual forehead with the heavy, straight-lined eyebrows, the waving rich brown hair, with a strand of silver here and there--the somber dress of black, the white lace collar and the dainty white lace cap on the back of her beautiful hair--it took his breath. The more he saw of these Southern people, men and women, the more absurd became the stuff he had read so often about the Puritan of New England and the Cavalier of the South. He was more and more overwhelmed with the conviction that the Americans were _one_ people racially and temperamentally. The only difference on earth between them was that some settled in the bleak hills and rock-bound coast of the North and others in the sunlit fields and along the shining shores of the South. He returned with Jennie Barton to her home with the deepening conviction that he was making no progress. He must use this girl's passionate devotion to her country as the lever by which to break into her heart or he would fail. He paused on the doorstep and spoke with quick decision: "Miss Jennie, your Southern women have fired my imagination. I'm going to resign my commission with the Sardinian Ministry and enter the service of the South--" "You mean it?" "I was never in more deadly earnest." He looked straight into her brown eyes until she lowered them. "I need not tell you that you have been my inspiration. You understand that without my saying it." Before Jennie could answer he had turned and gone with quick, firm step. She watched his slender, graceful figure with a new sense of exhilaration and tenderness. CHAPTER XX THE ANACONDA While General Joseph E. Johnston was devoting his energies to a campaign to change the date of his commission and his friends organizing their opposition to the President at Richmond, Gideon Welles, the quiet, unassuming Secretary of the Navy at Washington, was slowly but surely drawing the mighty coil, the United States Navy, about the throat of the South. He made little noise but the work he did was destined to become the determining factor of the war. The first blow was struck at North Carolina.