At his next call he found me upset over the elopement of the husband of a favourite cousin. Those horrid headlines in the paper referred to someone I actually knew! It was a relief to discuss it with a friend. This talk led to a discussion of kindred topics. Afterward, as I tried to recall our conversation, it seemed to me it had been on a particularly lofty plane. I could seem to remember nothing which led up to what happened. I remember that the large willow rockers in which we sat got gradually nearer, and that the first I knew he was holding my hands and looking in my eyes, and I was permitting it with less and less resistance, a dangerous fascination, a kind of paralysis stealing over me that held me spellbound. He was talking, talking breathlessly, ardently, on his knees by my chair. I think he wept over my hand and put his head in my lap; and there I sat like one dazed--conscious of all he said, but only half able to reason, and, for a time, seemingly, wholly incapable of stemming the tide of his passionate outburst. I seemed to live ages in what must have been only a few minutes. Presently I roused myself and then, like one in pain on awakening, felt wounded to the very soul--a stain was forever on my womanhood--a married man had confessed his love for me! Suddenly I saw what in my blindness and ignorance I had only vaguely divined in the weeks previous--all, all had been leading up to this. A deadly faintness came over me. I fell back in my chair, conscious still, cruelly conscious, but passive, limp, and mute. He must have taken this for acquiescence, for he kissed me--on the cheek, near the neck. _It burned me_, and aroused me. I sat up, passive no longer. What I said I do not know, but he felt my anger and shrank from it. I almost tore the spot from my face in the vehemence with which I tried to eradicate that burning kiss. That angered him to the point of fury, and my words enraged him more. While I had been in that passive state, and he was covering my hands with kisses, he had said he would wait years for me, if need be, if I would only tell him that I would love him when he was free. On finding my tongue, I bitterly denounced him for that; told him if he were free I would not marry him; that I could never love him; and by then I must have experienced a marked revulsion of feeling, for I loathed him.