Olympia had been jogging along, apparently oblivious to everything but the blazing vision of sun and cloud above the lake, purpling shapes of mirage, reflecting the smooth surface of the glowing water. But as the young man's voice--fallen into a melodious murmur--ceased, she took up the theme with unexpected earnestness.
"That's the error the South has made from the first. You know my father was a public man. I have been educated more at our dinner-table and in his talks with guests than at school. That is, the things that have taken strongest hold of my mind young girls rarely hear or understand. Now I think I can tell you something that may be of value to you in official places where you are going. The North is not only in earnest--it is religiously in earnest. If you know Puritan history you know what that means. For example: if Jack had hesitated a moment or made delay to get rank in the army, I should have abhorred him. So would our mother, though she seems to be dismayed at his serving as a common soldier. I adore Jack; I think him the finest, the most perfect nature after my father's--that lives. But I give him up gladly, because to keep him would be to degrade him. We know that he may fall; that he may come back to us a cripple or worse. But, as you see, we make no sign. Not a line of routine has been changed in the house. Jack will march away and never see a tear in my eye or feel my pulse tremble. It is not in our Northern blood to give much expression to sentiment, but we feel none the less deeply--much more deeply, I think, than you exuberant Southerners; you are impulsive, mercurial, and fickle."
"Oh, don't say that: I can't bear to hear you say it; we have deep feelings, we are constant, true as steel, chivalrous--"
"Yes, you are delightful people; but you are always living in the past. Shall I say it? You are womanlike; you can't reason. What you want at the moment is right, and only that; with us nothing is real until we have tried and proved it. If you count on Northern apathy you will soon see your mistake. When Beauregard fired on Fort Sumter the North was of one mind, and will stay so until all is again as it was."
"Pray don't let us talk on this subject. I'm free to own that it does not interest me. Then," he added adroitly, "you are readier in argument than I, because you were brought up in it. But what I want to say is, that it seems base for me to turn upon the goodness I have met in this house, and--and--"
