A window was being opened in one of the rooms above where he sat. Why was not that the window of her room? Why was it not opened to let her speak out to him--to whisper to him that she was there--waiting for him--waiting for him? He was a sane man under the influence of a pure passion--a passion whose chief property it is to stimulate the imagination even of the unimaginative; and every sound that he heard breaking the silence of this exquisite summer night had this effect upon him. He felt that he could not live without her. He had fallen into such a condition of thinking about her as made it impossible for him to weigh in connection with her such considerations as prudence, propriety and Mrs. Grundy; all that he knew, or was capable of knowing, was that he loved her, and that he wanted her to be with him always--he loved her and nothing else in the world; he was incapable of loving anything else in the world. She absorbed all the love of which he was capable. He felt that he should be deserving of the fate of Ananias and Sapphira his wife if he had kept back any of his possessions of love from her to bestow upon some one else. He cared nothing for anything in the heaven above or the earth beneath, or the waters that are under the earth, apart from her; but with her he felt that he loved them all! This was the condition of the man who had never in his life been involved in an affair in which love played any but the most subordinate part. He had had his chances, as most men who have lived for nearly thirty years with no recognized occupation usually have. If he had caused the worldly mothers of eligible daughters (and too many of them) who were aware of his prospects, to hold him in contempt, he had at the same time caused the husbands of uncertain wives no uneasiness whatever He had had his little episodes, of course--those patches of pattern which go so far to relieve the fabric of a man’s life from monotony; but, to continue the simile, this pattern had not been printed in fast colours; it had not stood the test of time or cold water, but had faded out of his life, leaving scarcely a trace behind. He had never believed himself to be capable of rising to the dizzy heights of such a passion as this in whose grasp he felt himself, high above the earth and all earthly considerations. He was astonished at first when he found himself walking about the turf of the tennis ground in order to catch a glimpse of her--detesting the play, and so making it pretty hot for his opponents because it stood between her and himself; cursing the nice people who had found her so nice that they took care to keep her near themselves; and at last leaving the ground in sheer despair of being able to find her alone, so that he could sit beside her and watch her face, or the exquisite lines of her figure down to her fairy feet which he wanted to kiss.