He turns with a start. One of the dusky-eyed belles of Memphis, with whom he has a casual acquaintance, has stopped to chat with him--a tall, handsome young lady in a mannish costume of navy-blue velvet, double-breasted English walking-jacket, a mannish hat set jauntily on her black hair, and a set of Grecian features, and large, black eyes. His gray eyes light momentarily. "Ah! Miss De Vere, this _is_ a pleasure! About the thoughts--they were not worth your inquiry." "I am the best judge of that," and something in her tones, not her careless words, imply that all his thoughts are precious to her. He tosses his cigar away, and turning, asks, politely: "Are you out for a stroll? May I walk with you?" "Am I out for a stroll? Yes, but on my way home now. You may see me there with pleasure." They walk on together down the quiet street, and her cheek flushes a warmer red as she chatters softly to him, he rather listening than talking. It is his way. "I thought you were out of the city--at the North," he says, in answer to some remark. "Your father told me two months ago he meant to take his family away from the pestilence." "And so we were. We have but just gotten back since the fever began to lose its hold. How brave you were to stay here! Ugh!" she shuddered a little, "that terrible fever! Do you know people say that you are a hero?" "Do they?" A low laugh ripples over his serene, finely cut lips. He wears no beard, no mustache, and every flitting emotion shows itself about his mobile mouth. She sees a careless sort of surprise on his face now--nothing more. "Don't you care for it? It is so pleasant to be praised," she says, in some wonder. "I don't know--is it?" "Is it not? Do you mean to say that you attach no value to fame--fame that is won by good deeds?" "I don't know," he answers again, in an absent way. "I might have done it in my younger days--scarcely now. I like to do good for its own sake--not for any praise that may follow it." "I know--I have heard at least," she stammered, with strange timidity, "that you lost your arm to--to save another man's life! Is it so, Captain Clendenon--did you give your arm for his life?" her dusky eyes kindling with a passionate hero-worship, that is characteristic of Southern women. "Yes, I gave my arm for his life," he says, grimly. "I might as well have given him my life, for when I buried my left arm on the battle-field at Chancellorsville I buried with it all the hopes that make a man's life worth the living." "And why?" an unspoken sympathy on her pretty face. "What hopes can there be that your misfortune can possibly destroy?" They turn a corner into a side street, where her home lies, meeting a group coming toward them, a man with a bright-faced wife clinging to one arm, a little laughing child by the other hand, and two others following after. His glance marks them out a moment, then meets hers, as he quotes, half-sadly: