He was growing older fast.

He was more of a man, and he weighed and measured things more.

He recognized that Charleston, while the second city of the South in size and the first in leadership, was only Charleston, after all, far inferior in weight and numbers to the great cities of the North.

Often he looked toward the North over the vast, intervening space and tried to reckon what forces lay there.
The evening before their departure they sat on the wide piazza that swept along the entire front of the inn of Madame Delaunay.

Colonel Leonidas Talbot and Major Hector St.Hilaire sat with them.