WHY THE STRANGER WOULD NOT LOSE HIS SHELLEY FOR THE WORLD Picking up the book, I opened it involuntarily at the titlepage, and then--I resisted a great temptation! I shut it again.

A little flowery plot of girl's handwriting had caught my eye, and a girl's pretty name.
When Love and Beauty meet, it is hard not to play the eavesdropper, and it was easy to guess that Love and Beauty met upon that page.

St.
Anthony had no harder fight with the ladies he was unpolite enough to call demons, than I in resisting the temptation to take another look at that pen-and-ink love making.

Now, as I look back, I think it was sheer priggishness to resist so human and yet so reverent an impulse.
There is nothing sacred from reverence, and love's lovers have a right to regard themselves as the confidants of lovers, whenever they may chance to surprise either them or their letters.
While I was still hesitating, and wondering how I could get the book conveyed to its romantic owner, suddenly a figure turned the corner of the road, and there was Alastor coming back again.

I slipped the book, in distracted search for which he was evidently still engaged, under the ferns, and, leisurely lighting a pipe, prepared to tease him.