Thus the weeks fled.  No word had passed between these two to which the world might not have listened.  Whatever language their hearts and their eyes spoke had not been interpreted by their lips.  He had not yet touched her hand save as it met his, gloved or formal, or as it rested on his arm; and yet, as one walking through the dusk and stillness of a summer night feels a flower or falling leaf brush his check, and starts, shivering as from the touch of a disembodied soul, so this slight outward touch thrilled his inmost being; this hand, meeting his for an instant, shook his soul.

Indefinite and undefined,—­there was no thought beyond the moment; no wish to take this young girl into his arms and to call her “wife” had shaped itself in his brain.  It was enough for both that they were in one another’s presence, that they breathed the same air, that they could see each other as they raised their eyes, and exchange a word, a look, a smile.  Whatever storm of emotion the future might hold for them was not manifest in this sunny and delightful present.

Upon one subject alone did they disagree with feeling,—­in other matters their very dissimilarity proving an added charm.  This was a curious question to come between lovers.  All his life Surrey had been a devotee of his country and its flag.  While he was a boy Kossuth had come to these shores, and he yet remembered how he had cheered himself hoarse with pride and delight, as the eloquent voice and impassioned lips of the great Magyar sounded the praise of America, as the “refuge of the oppressed and the hope of the world.”  He yet remembered how when the hand, every gesture of which was instinct with power, was lifted to the flag,—­the flag, stainless, spotless, without blemish or flaw; the flag which was “fair as the sun, clear as the moon,” and to the oppressors of the earth “terrible as an army with banners,”—­he yet remembered how, as this emblem of liberty was thus apostrophized and saluted, the tears had rushed to his boyish eyes, and his voice had said, for his heart, “Thank God, I am an American!”

One day he made some such remark to her.  She answered, “I, too, am an American, but I do not thank God for it.”

At another time he said, as some emigrants passed them in the street, “What a sense of pride it gives one in one’s country, to see her so stretch out her arms to help and embrace the outcast and suffering of the whole world!”

She smiled—­bitterly, he thought; and replied, “O just and magnanimous country, to feed and clothe the stranger from without, while she outrages and destroys her children within!”

“You do not love America,” he said.

“I do not love America,” she responded.

“And yet it is a wonderful country.”

“Ay,” briefly, almost satirically, “a wonderful country, indeed!”

“Still you stay here, live here.”

“Yes, it is my country.  Whatever I think of it, I will not be driven away from it; it is my right to remain.”