"The strange manner in which she bore herself in this position ought to have warned me. To my first passionate wooing she had opposed a prudishness and a maidenly reserve such as I had not expected to find in an actress, especially as she let me see plainly enough that she felt anything but indifferent toward me, and that the homage of an artist whose reputation was then in the ascendant was exceptionally flattering to her. But no sooner did I, somewhat taken aback by this severe maidenly reserve, make her a proposal that aimed at nothing less than our marriage and her retirement from the stage, than her tone changed. She began to treat the subject with greater lightness, to utter platitudes against marriages among artists, and in praise of the happiness of liberty; to tease me with moods, and to attract me again by all kinds of pretty coaxing; so that my passionate obstinacy was urged higher and higher, until at last I forced her, half against her will, to fix the wedding-day. "Of course this excited the greatest amazement among my former companions, who could scarcely believe their ears. To those with whom I was most intimate I expatiated on the matter as an exceedingly practical undertaking, as a truly sensible marriage. I should never again find a being who was thus equally removed from Philistinism and evil courses. Besides, one cannot go on sowing wild oats forever; and it seemed to me that now, when my prospects had begun to seem quite favorable on account of a number of orders I had received, was the most suitable time to settle to a steadier life. This is what I said to my most intimate friends. I said nothing to the others. One of them, our Falstaff, who was the one most concerned at my loss, took me aside one day and asked whether I was really in earnest about this foolish affair. Upon my replying that I was sufficiently in earnest to forbid any contemptuous criticism upon my conduct, even from a good friend, he shrugged his shoulders and excused himself: he had not had the slightest intention of offending me, but he merely wished to call my attention to the fact that this freak of mine might cost me too dearly. Then, when I pressed him further, he remarked that 'in his opinion there were such things as artificial violets, and that the most genuine thing about this creature was her acting, which, unfortunately, she kept up in real life as well as on the stage.' And then followed a short sketch of her adventurous career, which this well-meaning man had collected, not without considerable trouble, from numberless inquiries at the theatres where she had appeared.