selfish--very selfish?"

"I believe the Bible says to leave all and cleave unto your wife,"
returned Garrison.

"Yes. But not your intended wife."

"But, you see, she is of the cleaving type."

"And why this hurry? Aren't you depriving your uncle and aunt
unnecessarily early?"

"But it is the only answer, as you pointed out. You then would be free."

He did not know why he was indulging in this repartee. Perhaps because
the situation was so novel, so untenable. But a strange, new force was
working in him that day, imparting a peculiar twist to his humor. He was
hating himself. He was hopeless, cynical, bitter.

If he could have laid hands upon that eminent lawyer, Mr. Snark, he
would have wrung his accomplished neck to the best of his ability.
He, Snark, must have known about this prenatal engagement. And his
bitterness, his hopelessness, were all the more real, for already he
knew that he cared, and cared a great deal, for this curious girl with
the steady gray eyes and wealth of indefinite hair; cared more than he
would confess even to himself. It seemed as if he always had cared; as
if he had always been looking into the depths of those great gray eyes.
They were part of a dream, the focusing-point of the misty past--forever
out of focus.