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“I cannot accept even the inevitable so calmly,” cried the young man in sudden passion. “I loved her from a child; I never had a thought but for her! She was promised me when we were boy and girl! She used to tease me, saying she hated me, and then with a soft glance of her dark eyes disarmed my anger. She would thrust me from her with her tiny foot, and then draw me to her with one slender finger hooked in the dangling chain of a jacket button, and laughingly promise to be good, breaking her word the next moment. She would taunt me when I sprang toward her in alarm as she leaped from the fountain parapet, and in turn would cry out in agonies of fright as I hung from the highest boughs of the garden trees, or when I dashed by her on the back of a half-broken horse, stopping him or throwing him perhaps on his haunches, with one turn of the cruel bit. Through all her vagaries I loved her, and perhaps the more because of them; and I fancied she loved me. Even later, when she had grown more formal and I more ardent, I believed that her coy repulses were but maiden arts to win me on.”