Was I married, or was there any one that I thought of marrying? What could she mean, I wondered, as I looked for a moment after the slight and graceful figure? My coming to see her that evening must have something to do with my marrying somebody? Was it herself? If so, would I marry her? I never thought for a moment about money in connection with the matter. Partly on account of the veil she wore, partly from the strangeness and hurry of our interview, and my own bashfulness, I had not seen her face, at least not so as to be able to form any picture of it. And yet, there was no doubt in my mind as to the answer. Marry her? Why, already I was madly in love with her. In love with a woman whose face you have never clearly seen? It may seem absurd, but so it was. I could not recognize her face since I had never really seen it. But the erect and graceful form, and the dignified carriage of the head, I could have recognized amongst ten thousand figures, and with the mind that gave the grace and loveliness to her presence and words, I felt that I was in love forever. How far all this was due to the effect of the peculiar circumstances of our interview on my imagination, at that time of life when the imagination is most powerful, and how long my passion would have lasted if things had taken any ordinary course, I cannot say; but for the present I was, in downright earnest, madly in love with a form, a voice, and a presence, to which my fancy, taking the key from the little of the face that I had seen, added a countenance whose loveliness and wisdom and purity the mere imagination could not bring into being. So I went on to Wimpole Street, where I delivered the parcel, and then returned to Holborn, speculating all the way on the one momentous question, Whom did she want me to marry? Was it herself? Now I had learned in what somebody has termed the University of Adversity an art which appears to me to be of even greater practical importance than the arts that are taught at the better-endowed universities. It was the art of taking a candid and unprejudiced view of my own affairs. And, before I got back to Mr. Conder's, my facility in this art had assured me that, whatever might be the ultimate solution of the mystery, there was not, as far as she was concerned, a scintilla of love in the matter. For a few minutes I had some idea of its being a case of love at first sight on her part. But on a little reflection I saw that the quiet business-like manner in which she had asked her questions, and made the appointment, were quite inconsistent with the enthusiasm and self-forgetfulness which accompany the sentiments that arise from love. After what seemed to me to be the longest evening I had ever known, I found myself at the door of 41 York Place.