H. B. Marriott Watson

“ To rob her of those doubts and tremors seemed for that moment to reduce her to the horrid prose of life; she stood now on heights romantical, with strange and mystic regions about her feet. But this fancy passed like a shadow over my determination, and when, startled at the long silence, she turned and glanced wistfully at my face, I made a movement forward and took her hand.
'Dearest,' said I, 'I love you.'
She shrank from me against the window; her eyes were beggars for my mercy; but heedless in the full course of my passion I discovered to her my hopes in a flood of language. ”

“ She was uncertain of a strange course if she had not his opinion on it, and at the moment when she seemed to be yielding to the rarest emotions of her nature, his shadow had sufficed to frighten her from the trembling surrender.
It was impossible to remain in this distressing uncertainty. I loved her in a tumultuous fashion and the tide of my passion might not be unduly retarded. I must put her to the test, I found, and dare my dismissal. All fortunes must come to the touch at last, I thought, and I had a lively faith in my own success. ”

“ Many signs pointed at her condition; for one thing she had come to betray a blushing embarrassment if we met of a sudden, and though she was able to recover pretty quickly, after the manner of women, yet her eyes would still hold their trouble for some little time, as though her nature were but slowly settling from its disturbance. Indeed she was herself most uncertain of her mind, and sometimes I thought I had detected in her little airs of conduct a fear of her own bewilderment. She was new to the sensations, and avoided considering them with an instinct something between awe and shame. ”