She locked her door carefully and sat down to think, too nervous and excited to retire.
Putting from her the indignation and disgust evoked by her middle-aged adorer’s loathed advances and cruel revenge, she tried to think only of her lover and of the happy two hours spent out in the silvery moonlight by his side.
She recalled every look, every word, every tone, with trembling ecstasy. There was none like him; none, in all the wide world, she told herself. To her joy he had admitted his identity with her unknown lover. He was the author of the poems, the donor of the candy, the books, the flowers. Yes, he had climbed to her casement to lay these tokens of love on her window sill, choosing this method of wooing because he had been told her cousins did not allow her any acquaintance with young men.
Then he had adroitly let her do some guessing, and admitted that he had seen her at the church in the woods when she asked him.
“You see, I was visiting a college chum of mine in that neighborhood,” he said truthfully.
His bonnie sweetheart had gazed at him in innocent rapture, crying:
“To think that you came from Ohio, leaving so many pretty girls behind you, and fell in love with little rustic me!”
“None was half so beautiful as you, my darling,” he replied truthfully, though she hardly knew how to credit such an extravagant compliment.
She did not know how peerlessly lovely she was; she thought the whole world was full of women as fair as herself.
And she felt grateful to Heaven for fixing his dear love on her alone. The thought came to her that if he had not loved her now she would be so terribly alone in life she could hardly bear her existence.