"My friend," she said, and she extended me her hand. "I thank you for your company, but, alas! the hours speed, and I have much to do. Good night!" I tried to reply, but I could not. She permitted me to kiss her hand, however, and even smiled again. I left the room in a delirium of happiness, poor fool, and not one of my enraptured dreams that night disclosed to me the precipice upon whose brink I stood. The days that followed were over full of strange, untried experiences for me to properly describe them. Marion was by my side whenever chance allowed. But every hour she showed to me a different mood, a varied and elusive distortion of her inmost self; so that I came to wonder more and more whether I knew truly aught of her except that she was beautiful in all her moods, and that I loved her irretrievably. One moment she was sad and steeped in cold unbending gloom. The next she was a gay companion, chattering of this and that as lightly and as brightly as a bird on sunlit bough. Again she was both grave and friendly at a time, and we conversed together of men, and books, and serious philosophies like two grey-haired, sober-minded savants. Sometimes, yet more infrequently, she forced upon me quarrels in caprice, to give her opportunity to scorch me with her scorn. And yet, again, more rarely still, she led me on with shy, alluring glances, or even bolder looks, provocative of passion, to woo her as I could; whereon, her will too readily achieved, she swiftly changed from melting fire to ice, and I was left in agonized confusion, swung like Mahommed's coffin between despair and hope.