"Will you kindly stop, the driver, or shall I?"
"Does truth annoy you?"
"I decline to discuss truth with you. Will you stop the driver?"
"Not until we reach Seventy-first Street West."
"By what right—"
"The right of a man who loves you. There, it is out, and my pride has gone down the wind. After to-night I shall trouble you no further. But every man has the right to tell one woman that he loves her; and I love you. I loved you the moment I first laid eyes on you. I couldn't help it. I say this to you now because I perceive how futile it is. What dreams I have conjured up about you! Poor fool! When I was at work your face was always crossing the page or peering up from the margins. I never saw a fine painting that I did not think of you, or heard a fine piece of music that I did not think of your voice."
There was a long interval of silence; block after block went by. I never once looked at her.
"If I had been rich I should have put it to the touch some time ago; but my poverty seems to have been fortunate; it has saved me a refusal. In some way I have mortally offended you; how, I can not imagine. It can not be simply because I innocently broke an engagement."
Then she spoke.
"You dined after the theater that night with a comic-opera singer. You were quite at liberty to do so, only you might have done me the honor to notify me that you had made your choice of entertainment."