by
on restless wings; days so full of excitement that they seemed to take
years with them in their flight.

It was a lovely morning in February; the air had already a May softness
in it, and the crocuses were bright in the grounds of the Capitol, when
Edward and I went to take our favorite walk, and there, in sight of the
broad river which is now a world-known name of division, he told me he
had made up his mind to leave the army; that there might be fighting,
and he could not fight against his own people, whom he believed to be in
the right; that he thought it more honorable to resign at that moment
than to wait until the hour of need. I could not oppose him, for I knew
he thought he was doing his duty. I remembered how different his
opinions were from mine, and that his whole system of education had
trained him in dissimilar ideas of right from those held in the North.
Georgia was his country, for which he lived, and for which he thought he
ought to die, if need were. The shackles of inherited prejudices
trammelled his spirit, as they might have trammelled the spirit of a
wiser man, who could have shaken them off in the end; but my lover was
not wide-minded, and had not the clear sight that sees over and beyond
these petty lives of ours that are as nothing in the way of a great
principle and a God-bidden struggle; his eyes saw only what they had
been taught to see--his home, in its greenness and beauty, not the dank
soul-malaria, to which, alas! so many of us are acclimated.

He resigned, and his resignation was accepted without delay or
difficulty, as were all resignations in those days. The spring began to
break in all its glory, and the grass grew green in Virginia, on fields
that were trampled and bloody before that battle summer was over. The
little wren sang again its song. This year a song of promise--of promise
never to be fulfilled!

For the news of Sumter came, and the North rose with a cry, and my heart
leaped up within me with a thrill stronger and deeper and more masterful
than any mere personal feeling can ever give; a feeling that rules my
soul to-day even as it ruled in that first excited hour.

Edward went South, and I let him go alone. I could not, I would not go
with him. I had no sympathy, no tenderness, scarcely forgiveness for the
men who had brought the evil upon us. We parted lovers, hoping for days
of peace, and sure of reunion when those days should come; and every
night and every mornin