“I have been waiting to see you, Angela,” he said, taking her hand and leading her to the old leather-covered sofa; and then briefly and simply as a man who is a man speaks his love, he asked Angela to marry him. She had never said “no” to Neville in her life and it was clearly impossible now. Her shyness, her coldness, neither surprised nor disconcerted Neville. She was in many respects younger than her nineteen years, and this was her first acquaintance with love. But Neville knew or thought he knew that Angela’s intimacy with him was so great, her dependence on him so absolute, her affection for him of such long standing that she could not only be happy with him, but that she could not be happy with another man--for Neville Tremaine thought first of the woman he loved and secondly of himself. And in this belief he had a little time of rapture. But his dream was broken when he mentioned marriage to Angela. “I shouldn’t have spoken so soon, Angela, but for the time in which we live. You know I am leaving day after to-morrow, and God knows when, if ever, I shall return.” “You will come back when the State secedes,” said Angela positively. They were sitting on the sofa with Angela’s bright head close to Neville’s dark one. “Ah, my dearest,” he said, “I don’t know whether I shall ever come back. I haven’t yet said whether I would resign from the army or not, and if I feel as I do now I shan’t.” Angela drew away from him and looked at him with wide, startled eyes. “I--I don’t understand,” she said. “Of course you will resign; everybody expects that you will.” “I know it. It would be a great deal easier for me if I could. But a soldier, Angela, has not the same attitude of conscience that any other man has. You know honor should come first with every man, but military honor takes possession of a man and disposes of him; so it will dispose of me.” Angela gazed at him with dark and troubled eyes. She did not fully understand all that Neville’s words implied, but they gave her pain and amazement and Neville seeing this gently explained to her. “What I mean is if the choice were given me on the one hand of having you, beloved, of fulfilling my father’s and mother’s wishes, of inheriting Harrowby as my father and mother have always told me, and on the other hand of giving up you and all whom I love and my inheritance, I should be compelled to do it if I felt that my duty as a soldier required me to remain in the United States Army, and at this moment it so appears to me.” Angela fell back and withdrew her hand from Neville’s, and he made no effort to detain it. “You have promised to marry me, Angela,” he said quietly, “but if you are frightened at what you have done, I am the last man in the world to hold you to your word.”