It brought her white fingers, cleaned of their disguising stains, as a sudden revelation to her of what had happened; she instantly slipped them back under the coverlet again.
Brant did not speak, but with folded arms stood gazing upon her.

And it was her voice that first broke the silence.
"You have recognized me?
Well, I suppose you know all," she said, with a weak half-defiance.
He bowed his head.

He felt as yet he could not trust his voice, and envied her her own.
"I may sit up, mayn't I ?" She managed, by sheer force of will, to struggle to a sitting posture.

Then, as the coverlet slipped from the bare shoulder, she said, as she drew it, with a shiver of disgust, around her again,-- "I forgot that you strip women, you Northern soldiers! But I forgot, too," she added, with a sarcastic smile, "that you are also my husband, and I am in your room." The contemptuous significance of her speech dispelled the last lingering remnant of Brant's dream.

In a voice as dry as her own, he said,-- "I am afraid you will now have to remember only that I am a Northern general, and you a Southern spy." "So be it," she said gravely.