§ i
NO one could have known this better. She was in her room, standing before the mirror, looking with critical attention at her image. She was at her loveliest and well she knew it. She was in white, with a pale green sash about her twenty inch waist. Her red hair was curled over her forehead in a low bang, below which her brown eyes were marvelously bright and alluring. Her face was radiant with happiness, but there lay over it a faint shadow, a sort of tenderness.
This was to be the day. She knew it. She had read his determination in his face the day before. And it was all coming out just as she had wished it to come. Ever since her school days that had been her dream—to be proposed to by a dark, handsome man in evening dress, at a dance. There had been other proposals but none of them just right; there had been other men to whom her fancy had strayed, but never like this. She felt for this silent and stalwart young fellow a pity, a compassion that bordered on pain. She didn’t like to let him out of her sight. She longed so to make him happy. He seemed so lonely, so helpless, so neglected, so pitiably in need of a comrade. Since she had seen his horrible home and his chilly old mother, she had loved him more, felt more sorry for him than ever. Oh, no doubt about it, he was the man!
The sense of impending change was upon her. This room would never look the same to her again, her own face would never have quite this look again; after this evening everything would be different. She was lively and high-spirited, but she was in no way frivolous. She wouldn’t make a promise unless she meant to keep it. This was the most important step in her life, and she had considered it well. She had studied her man; she felt that she knew him. She was well aware that he wasn’t clever, and that he wasn’t very good-natured, but she was so accustomed to good-nature, to kindness, tolerance, that she did not know their value. Let him be a little cross if he wished, the dear old bear! She would wheedle away his ill-humour with her own gaiety. She would be the light of his life, she would bring youth and happiness into his monotonous existence. She could be more to him than to any other man.
Divine and naïve idea of a young girl, innocently conscious of her own immeasurable value!