Love under Fire. Randall Parrish

friends?"

      She hesitated, as though considering the full intent of my request.

      "Hardly that, Lieutenant Galesworth. The word 'friend' should mean much, and we are merely chance acquaintances--politically enemies."

      "I had hoped that difference--merely the accident of war--might have been swept aside. It has no personal weight with me, and I supposed you were of broader mind."

      "I am," she responded earnestly. "Some of my best friends are Northerners, wearing that uniform, but, as it chances, we have met in war, playing at cross-purposes. You are a Federal scout whom I have unwittingly helped through the Confederate lines. Surely I have done enough already to help you--perhaps to injure the cause I love--without being asked for more. Under other conditions we might continue friends, but not as matters stand."

      "Yet later--when the war ends?"

      "It is useless to discuss what may occur then. There is little likelihood we shall ever meet after to-day. Indeed, I have no wish that we should."

      It was a dismissal so clearly expressed I could only bow, wondering what it was I saw in the depths of her eyes which seemed almost to contradict the utterance of the lips.

      "You leave me no choice."

      "There is none. I have no desire to be considered an enemy, and there is no possibility for us to become friends. We are but the acquaintances of a chance meeting." She held out her hand across the table, the impulsive movement robbing her words of their sting. "You understand this is not indifference, but necessity."

      I clasped closely the white fingers extended toward me, my heart throbbing, but my lips held prisoners by her eyes.

      "Yes, I understand perfectly, but I make no promise."

      "No promise! What do you mean?"

      "Only that to my mind this is no mere chance acquaintance, nor is it destined to end here. Sometime I am going to know you, and we are going to be friends."

      "Indeed!" her eyes dropped, the shadow of lashes on her cheeks. "You are very audacious to say that."

      "Yet you are not altogether sorry to hear me say it."

      "Oh, I do not take your words seriously at all. They are mere Yankee boasting--"

      She stopped suddenly, the slight flush fading from her cheeks as she arose to her feet, staring out through the open window. It was the sound of horses' hoofs on the gravel roadway, and I sprang up also, endeavoring to see. A squad of troopers was without, dusty, hard-riding fellows, uniformed in Confederate gray.