She wore a dress of rich golden-brown, the false tucks falling smoothly over her hoops. She had done her hair since early morning, but had never been tending wounded rebels in that gown. He said, “It’s beautiful. I never saw you wear that before.”

“Can we walk for a moment?” she asked. “Away from the house. Anywhere.”

He looked around. “It’s all the same—you dare not go far. They’ve cleared things up a bit, around close.”

“I don’t mind. I have camphor on this handkerchief. I want to get away from the house.”

He took her arm and said, “Very well.” They went past the barns and through the open gate. The girl started toward an upper fence corner but Dan drew her back; he remembered the man from Indiana who was in that fence corner, unless some squad had found him. “Over near the oaks above my place,” he suggested. “There was little or no fighting at that point.” She said, Anywhere. I —want to—walk. The sunlight, weakened by thin clouds, made a sulphur pool out of their shadows and washed it ahead of them.

They came up to a slanting bowlder which had not been marred or distressed by the war; blackberry wires lay about it, dotted with red clusters.

“Do you wish to sit down?”

“Thank you. This will do.” She leaned beside the bowlder, with the silk handkerchief crumpled beneath her nose, and she looked with curiosity at the weeds as if she hoped to know their botany.

He knew that he had picked a berry or two and said, Not ripe, but she had answered nothing. “May I see your wrist?” he asked, and lifted the limp arm which she extended. Her scar was turning from pink to blue; it still looked raised and new, but some day all trace would be gone save for a silver hint when the light fell upon it in a certain way.

She said, slowly and believing it well: “He is going to be killed.”

“Who?”

“Tyler. I have known it for some time. There is something fearful in the thought.”

He didn’t know what to say. Her arm slid away from him, and he watched the heat doing things to her shadow. “You really believe—?”

“Before,” she said, “I didn’t care.”

There was a quick snarl in his throat; he couldn’t help it. “Now you do, eh?”

“I do not love Tyler. I never have. I was not a good wife.”

He asked angrily, “What is a good wife?”

“It was frightening,” she said. “Not quite a dream. It has seemed as if I saw him struck down with a sword, and the man who struck him down was sorry he had to do it.”

“You don’t find many people struck down with swords in modern warfare. We had scores around the place yesterday, and not one of those suffered a saber wound.”