watched her fingers and the
geranium leaves going from one side of my head to the other, watched
how every touch changed the tone of my costume, and felt that I could
not suffer it; and then it suddenly occurred to me that I, who a
little while before had not cared about my dress for the evening, now
did care and that determinedly. I knew I would wear no geranium
leaves, not even to please Mrs. Sandford. And for the first time a
question stole into my mind, what was I, Daisy, doing? But then I said
to myself, that the dress without this head adorning was perfect in
its elegance; it suited me; and it was not wrong to like beauty, nor
to dislike things in bad taste. Perhaps I was too handsomely dressed,
but I could not change that now. Another time I would go back to my
embroidered muslins, and stay there.

"I like it better without anything, Mrs. Sandford," I said, removing
her green decorations and turning away from the glass. Mrs. Sandford
sighed, but said "it would do without them," and then we started.

I can see it all again; I can almost feel the omnibus roll with me
over the plain, that still sultry night. All those nights were sultry.
Then, as we came near the Academic Building, I could see the lights in
the upper windows; here and there an officer sitting in a window-sill,
and the figures of cadets passing back and forth. Then we mounted to
the hall above, filled with cadets in a little crowd, and words of
recognition came, and Preston, meeting us almost before we got out of
the dressing-room.

"Daisy, you dance with me?"

"I am engaged, Preston, for the first dance."

"Already! The second, then, and all the others?"

"I am engaged," I repeated, and left him, for Mr. Thorold was at my
side.

I forgot Preston the next minute. It was easy to forget him, for all
the first half of the evening I was honestly happy in dancing. In
talking, too, whenever Thorold was my partner; other people's talk was
very tiresome. They went over the platitudes of the day; or they
started subjects of interest that were not interesting to me. Bits of
gossip--discussions of fashionable amusements with which I could have
nothing to do; frivolous badinage, which was of all things most
distasteful to me. Yet, amid it, I believe there was a subtle incense
of admiration which by degrees and insensibly found its way to my
senses. But I had two dances with Thorold, and at those times I was
myself and enjoyed unalloyed pleasure. And so