Liberty, Johnsville, and Uniontown in the evening of the 29th. It had been trying to rain, most of the day, and the provost guards kept gathering stragglers out of the fence corners. Lieutenant Eldridge was acquainted in this neighborhood; he invited everyone to a doings at the house of a Mr. Royster, who was said to be a good Union man. At first Fanning thought he wouldn’t go—he needed sleep, as did everyone else. But he went at last. He sat out on the piazza with a Miss Walthall from Dover, a visiting niece or something, and listened to her chatter about Longfellow. She wanted to know whether he had read “The Courtship of Miles Standish,” but he hadn’t; he didn’t care much for poetry. Then she wanted to go to the spring across the road, and get a drink.

It was dark as Egypt, though the drizzle had stopped. Her aunt would be crazy if she knew how Belle was slipping out like that—all alone, with a man … she did want a drink from the spring. It was clear water: aqua pura, cool and mossy on such a stifling night. They went. Miss Walthall tripped in the dark and fell, she fell against Tyler, he had her by the hand. She cried softly. “Oh, Captain,” and he kissed her, but it tasted as all kisses tasted to him. They had their drink and went back to the house and Hugh Ridgeway said, Fanning, you sly dog, where have you been hiding Miss Walthall? And Fanning said, We’ve been to Dover and back, and I find Dover charming. She went to waltz with Hugh. Tyler sat out in the yard, on the edge of a flower-bed made from half an old hogshead, and he smelled the flowers which he squashed as he sat upon them. Whenever he tried to think about home, a lot of carriage wheels began to spin inside his brain. They went slowly at first; he could count the spokes. They had only ten or twelve spokes and he knew that they were not cannon wheels. Artillery wheels had fourteen spokes, mostly; he had counted them often enough.

He had always heard that in such moments a man should envisage the woman—construct her amid the nightmares which hung about him, watch her features take shape and slowly fade again. He tried hard enough to invoke his wife. But now he could see no wraith of tea-rose silk, no hands on piano keys—nothing except the smudge of his cigar, and camp fires spread russet all over the nearby farms. The house lights shone on ornamental leaves overhead, leaves cut and clipped by invalids who had nothing better to do, and masking whatever stars there might be. It was useless to attempt envisaging Irene or any other woman.