On second thoughts, I hope he will regard

The history of me as what some one dreamed,

And get to disbelieve it at the last:

Since to myself it dwindles fast to that,

Sheer dreaming and impossibility,—

Just in four days too! All the seventeen years,

Not once did a suspicion visit me

How very different a lot is mine

From any other woman's in the world.

The reason must be, 't was by step and step