When it happened to me, for the life of me I could not tell how it came about, or why I was in love. I only knew there was a kind of spell in the atmosphere. We were together up the river, the afternoon tea-basket had done its duty, the rest of our party had scattered in different directions, and Mrs. Willoweed and I had wandered into a cornfield, where we discussed Shelley and plucked poppies in the soft sunny haze of an August afternoon. Whether it was the passionate suggestiveness of the poppies, or whether it was the influence of “Epipsychidion,” I know not; but it seemed to me on a sudden that Mrs. Willoweed was the only being worth living for, and, as our hands were drawn by some mysterious impulse to the same poppy, I took her hand instead of the flower and held it. She did not take it away, but let it rest in mine almost caressingly, while she said, with a bewitchingly mischievous smile “Isn’t this a little ridiculous?” The incongruity of the remark and the action completely captured me. What could I do but justify my impulse with a declaration of love? She listened with a pretty, feigned surprise, and said exactly the things which experience no doubt had taught her would drive her victory home. You see she was a little widow, and was consequently a complete compendium of the art of love. That is why little widows are so dangerous. They not only know their own sex, but they know ours too, and knowledge is power. [Illustration] Of course I wanted to marry Mrs. Willoweed, because she declared she would never marry again; and day after day I would exercise all my persuasive ingenuity in arguing her into a matrimonial frame of mind. But she was obdurate; a second husband presented no attraction to her. She had tasted the sweets of wedded life, she knew all about conjugal bliss, but somehow single blessedness, decked in the latest _môde_ of widow’s weeds, offered her a more alluring programme than a revival of the marriage vows. So, although she accepted my devotion along with the rest, she persisted in saying me nay; but she said it in such a fascinating manner that I was never tired of listening to it. She would always veil her “No!” with a delicate gauzy suggestion of “Yes!” She would keep a distant chance of an affirmative hovering in the air, as it were, and I consequently never broached the subject without that sort of sensation which a gambler experiences at a roulette table, or that which excited the members of the Suicide Club when the president used to deal the fateful cards; and while she kept me hovering on the brink of matrimony she would play upon my affections with the most exquisite science. She would assert her positive incapacity to be constant, which to a man of sentiment and spirit, as I trust I am, was of course a positive challenge to prove her otherwise. Constancy has always been one of woman’s proudest boasts, whether truthfully or not is a question of individual experience, and therefore for a woman