Long before Jennie Barton arrived in Richmond Socola had waked to the realization of the fact that he had been caught in the trap he had set for another. He had laughed at his growing interest in the slender dark little Southerner. He imagined that he had hypnotized himself into the idea that he really liked her. He had kept no account of the number of visits he had made. They were part of his programme. They had grown so swiftly into the habit of his thought and life he had not stopped to question the motive that prompted his zeal in pressing his attentions.

In fact his mind had become so evenly adjusted to hers, his happiness had been so quietly perfect, he had lost sight of the fact that he was pressing his attentions at all.

The day she was suddenly called South and he said good-by with her brown eyes looking so frankly into his he was brought sharply up against the fact that he was in love.

When he took her warm hand in his to press it for the last time, he felt an almost resistless impulse to bend and kiss her. From that moment he realized that he was in love—madly, hopelessly, desperately.

He had left the car and hurried back to his post in the State Department, his heart beating like a trip hammer. It was a novel experience. He had never taken girls seriously before. The last girl on earth he had ever meant to take seriously was this slip of a Southern enthusiast. For a moment he was furious at the certainty of his abject surrender. He lifted his eyes to the big columns of the Confederate Capitol and laughed:

"Come, come, man—common sense—this is a joke! Forget it all. To your work—your country calls!"

Somehow the country refused to issue but one call—the old eternal cry of love. Wherever he turned, Jennie\'s brown eyes were smiling into his. He looked at the Confederate Capitol to inspire him to deeds of daring and all he could remember was that she was a glorious little rebel with three brothers fighting for the flag that floated there. All he could get out of the supreme emblem of the "Rebellion" was that it was her Capitol and her flag and he loved her.

And then he laughed for sheer joy that love had come into his heart and made the world beautiful. He surrendered himself body and soul to the madness and wonder of it all.

If he could only see his mother and tell her, she could understand. He couldn\'t talk to the bundle of nerves Miss Van Lew had become. Her eyes burned each day with a deeper and deeper light of fanatical patriotism. He had yielded none of his own enthusiasm. But this secret of his heart was too sweet to be shared by a comrade in arms.

Only God\'s eye, or the soul of the mother who bore him, could understand what he felt. The realization of his love for Jennie brought a new fear into his heart. His nerve was put daily to supreme test in the dangerous work in which he was engaged. A single mistake would start an investigation sure to end with a rope around his neck. Love had given life a new meaning. The chatter of the squirrels in the Capitol Square was all about their homes and babies in the tree tops. The song of birds in the old flower garden on Church Hill made his heart thump with a joy that was agony. The flowers were just bursting into full bloom and their perfume filled the air with the lazy dreaming of the southern spring.

He must speak his love. His heart would burst with its beating. His mate must know. And she had returned to Richmond with a bitterness against the North that was something new in the development of her character.

The newspapers of Richmond had published an elaborate account of the sacking of her father\'s house, the smashing of its furniture and theft of its valuables. It had created a profound sensation. There was no mistaking the passion with which she had told this story.

He had laughed at first over the fun of winning the fairest little rebel in the South and carrying his bride away a prize of war, against the combined efforts of his Southern rivals. His love and pride had not doubted for a moment that her heart would yield to the man she loved no matter what uniform he might wear at the end of this war.

He couldn\'t make up his mind to ask her to marry him until she should know his real name and his true principles.

What would she do if the truth were revealed? His heart fairly stopped its beating at the thought. The fall of Richmond he now regarded as a practical certainty. The Merrimac had proven a vain hope to the Confederacy.

McClellan was landing his magnificent army on the Peninsula and preparing to sweep all before him. McDowell\'s forty thousand men were moving on his old line of march straight from Washington. Their two armies would unite before the city and circle it with an invincible wall of fire and steel. Fremont, Milroy and Banks were sweeping through the valley of the Shenandoah. Their armies would unite, break the connections of the Confederacy at Lynchburg and the South would be crushed.

That this would all be accomplished within thirty days he had the most positive assurances from Washington. So sure was Miss Van Lew of McClellan\'s triumphant entry into Richmond she had put her house in order for his reception. Her parlor had been scrupulously cleaned. Its blinds were drawn and the room dark, but a flag staff was ready and a union standard concealed in one of her feather beds. Over the old house on Church Hill the emblem of the Nation would first be flung to the breeze in the conquered Capital of the Confederacy.

The certainty of his discovery in the rush of the union army into the city was now the nightmare which haunted his imagination.

He could fight the Confederate Government on even terms. He asked no odds. His life was on the hazard. Something more than the life of a union spy was at stake in his affair with Jennie. Her life and happiness were bound in his. He felt this by an unerring instinct.

If this proud, sensitive, embittered girl should stumble on even a suspicion of the truth, she would tear her heart out of her body if necessary to put him out of her life.

For a moment he was tempted to give up his work and return to the North. It was the one sure way to avoid discovery when Richmond fell. The war over, he would have his even chance with other men when its bitterness had been softened. His work in Richmond was practically done. His men could finish it. The number of soldiers in the Southern armies had been accurately counted and reported to Washington. Why should he risk the happiness of the woman he loved and his own happiness for life by remaining another day?

The thought had no sooner taken shape than he put it out of his mind.

"Bah! I\'ve set my hand to a great task. I\'m not a quitter. I\'ll stand by my guns. No true woman ever loved a coward!"

He would take his chances and tell her his love.

He lifted the old-fashioned brass knocker on Senator Barton\'s door and banged it with such force he laughed at his own foolish eagerness:

"At least I needn\'t smash my way in!" he muttered.

"Yassah, des walk right in de parlor, sah," Jennie\'s maid said, with her teeth shining in a knowing smile.

Senator Barton had recovered from his illness. There could be no doubt about it. He was in the library holding forth in eloquent tones to a group of Confederate Congressmen who made his house their rendezvous. He was enjoying the martyrdom which the outrage on his home and the death of his aged mother and father had brought. He was using it to inveigh with new bitterness against the imbecility of Jefferson Davis and his administration. He held Davis personally responsible for every defeat of the South. He was the one man who had caused the fall of New Orleans, the loss of Fort Donelson and the failure to reap the victory at Shiloh.

"But you must remember, Senator," one of his henchmen mildly protested, "that Davis did save Albert Sidney Johnston to us and that alone made a victory possible."

"And what of it, if he threw it away by appointing a fool second in Command?"

There was a good answer to this—too good for the henchman to dare use it. He had sent Beauregard west to join Albert Sidney Johnston\'s command because Barton\'s junta, supporting Joseph E. Johnston against the administration, would no longer tolerate Beauregard in the same camp with their chief. They had demanded a free field for Joseph E............