"I could not ever possibly marry you," she said, as calmly as if she had been accustomed to dismissing suitors all her life.
They were still standing by the rose-bush whose desperate fate it was to produce pink roses.

With incredulous dismay, the minister saw her turn from him and take a step toward the house.
She had refused him! She was leaving him! At any moment Annabel might finish her Sunday School lesson and come out upon the lawn--all his self-possession vanished like a puff of smoke.
"Esther!" he cried, "Esther! wait.

Give me a moment." She paused, but did not turn.
"I think there is nothing more to say--I am very sorry." Sorry! She was sorry.

This young girl upon whom he had set his desire, of whom he had felt so sure, to whom his love should have come as a crown, was sorry.

King Cophetua, flouted by the beggar maid, could not have been more astonished, more deeply humiliated! But the greater wound was not to his pride.