32 A Girl in White

The spring had come again and was ripening into summer when I rode through the gentle sweep of the blue grass toward a house just under the edge of the horizon. The battle smoke was far behind and forgotten, and there was nothing around me but peace, nothing to tell of the muddy delta, the black swamps, and the field of the dead a thousand miles away, only the green grass and the wild flowers rippling under a gentle west wind, and the lazy cattle lying beside a brook flowing in coils of burnished silver through the meadows.

I rode on and the west wind sang in my ears. The old earth had blossomed again and put on her most beautiful colours. Afar gleamed the pink cone of a peach tree in bloom, and some flowers twining about a stone fence shone in blue and red.

I approached the house and in front of it, among the flowers, a tall girl in white, with a red rose in her hair, awaited me. When I took her hands in mine, I said:

“Marian, I have come back again, and I come for my answer.”

And then, as her face took the hue of the red rose in her hair, she spoke softly, but not so softly that I could not hear, the answer that I wished.

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