Washington, drilling raw soldiers, in the saddle all day, and
very happy, he wrote me. I had begun to be uneasy about his
writing to me. It was without leave from my father and mother,
and the leave I knew could not be obtained; it would follow
that the indulgence must be given up. I knew it must. I looked
that necessity in the face. A correspondence, such a
correspondence, carried on without their knowing of it, must
be an impossibility for me. I intended to tell Christian so,
and stop the letters, before I should go abroad. My
difficulties were becoming daily more and more clear, and
looking more and more unmanageable. I wondered sometimes
whither I was drifting; for guide or choose my course I could
not. I had got into the current by no agency and with no fault
of my own. To get out of the current - perhaps that might not
be till life and I should go out together. So I was a somewhat
sober and diligent student those closing weeks of the term;
and yet, very happy, for Christian loved me. It was a new,
sweet, strange, elixir of life.

The term was almost out, when I was called to the parlour one
day to see Mrs. Sandford. All winter I had not seen her; she
had not been in New York. I think she was unaffectedly glad to
see me; somehow my presence was pleasant to her.

"Out of school!" she exclaimed, after a few greetings had
passed. "Almost out of school. A woman, Daisy. My dear, I
never see you but I am struck with the change in you. Don't
change any more! you are just right."

I laughed and asked her, what was the change in me? I had not