"Oh, you woman! You are the first in the world for me! I know you now! I feel your power! It's too much for me. And I'm glad of it! I have waited for you. I looked for you in so many girls' faces only to find emptiness. I began to doubt. Love was just a poetic fancy, I thought. But I have found it. Let me love you."
She was not surprised, nor angry. She gently tried to detach his arms. "Oh, hush! hush!" she murmured. "It is not me! It is just the music!"
"It is you! It is you!" he protested. "I knew it when I first saw you. You or none!"
"But how silly!" she said in a warm, low voice. "You have seen me twice."
"What difference does that make?" he said impatiently. "One cannot be mistaken about a thing like this. I love you with all my heart. It only takes a second to happen, but it can never be undone while I live. You have entered into me and taken possession. If you left me I should be no more than a shell of a man!"
"Ah, but be sensible!" she begged him. He thought he felt her fingertips brush his hair. "Try to be sensible. Think of me."
"I wish to think only of you. What do you want me to do?"
"Get up and sit beside me. Let us talk."
He sat beside her on the bench. He did not offer to touch her again. The moonlight was in her face; the lifted, shadowy oval seemed angelic to him, he was full of awe.
"You're so beautiful!" he groaned, "so beautiful it hurts me!"