But my thoughts were too active for appetite--I counted on my fingers the days--there were four, only four, between me and--what?
One thing was certain--I must see my wife, or rather I should say my BETROTHED--I must see her that very day.

I then began to consider how my courtship had progressed since that evening when she had declared she loved me.

I had seen her frequently, though not daily--her behavior had been by turns affectionate, adoring, timid, gracious and once or twice passionately loving, though the latter impulse in her I had always coldly checked.

For though I could bear a great deal, any outburst of sham sentiment on her part sickened and filled me with such utter loathing that often when she was more than usually tender I dreaded lest my pent-up wrath should break loose and impel me to kill her swiftly and suddenly as one crushes the head of a poisonous adder--an all-too-merciful death for such as she.

I preferred to woo her by gifts alone--and her hands were always ready to take whatever I or others chose to offer her.