At last I felt that my time had come.

“Georgiana,” I said, “there is one secret I have never shared with you.  It is the only fear I have ever felt regarding our future.  But, if there should be a war—­you’d better know it now—­leave you or not leave you, I am going to join the army.”

She grew white and faint with the thought of a day to come.  But at last she said: 

“Yes; you must go.”

“I know one thing,” I added, after a long silence; “if I could do my whole duty as a Kentuckian—­as an American citizen—­as a human being—­I should have to fight on both sides.”

I have thus set down in a poor way a part of the only talk I ever had with Georgiana on these subjects during the year 1851.

Yesterday, about sunset, the earth and sky were beautiful with that fulness of peace which things often attain at the moment before they alter and end.  The hour seemed to me the last serene loveliness of summer, soon to be ruffled by gales and blackened by frosts.

Georgiana stood at her window looking into the west.  The shadows of the trees in my yard fell longer and longer across the garden towards her.  Darkest among these lay the shapes of the cedars and the pines in which the redbird had lived.  Her whole attitude bespoke a mood surrendered to memory; and I felt sure that we two were thinking of the same thing.

As she has approached that mystical revelation of life which must come with our marriage, Georgiana’s gayety has grown subtly overcast.  It is as if the wild strain in her were a little sad at having to be captured at last; and I too experience an indefinable pain that it has become my lot to subdue her in this way.  The thought possesses me that she submits to marriage because she cannot live intimately with me and lavish her love upon me in any other relation; and therefore I draw back with awe from the idea of taking such possession of her as I will and must.

As she stood at her window yesterday evening she caught sight of me across the yard and silently beckoned.  I went over and looked up at her, waiting and smiling.

“Well, what is it?” I asked at length, as her eyes rested on me with the fulness of affection.

“Nothing.  I wanted to see you standing down there once more.  Haven’t you thought of it?  This is the last time—­the last of the window, the last of the garden, the end of the past.  Everything after this will be so different.  Aren’t you a little sorry that you are going to marry me?”

“Will you allow me to fetch the minister this instant?”

In the evening they put on her bridal dress and sent over for me, and, drawing the parlor doors aside, blinded me with the sight of her standing in there, as if waiting in duty for love to claim its own.  As I saw her then I have but to close my eyes to see her now.  I scarce know why, but that vision of her haunts my mind mysteriously.