They went along evenly, happily, perhaps dreamily, letting the present and the future take care of themselves as best they could, making mountains of the past--mountains so high and sheer that they could not be surmounted in retreat.
Bonner was helplessly in love--so much so, indeed, that in the face of it, he lost the courage that had carried him through trivial affairs of the past, and left him floundering vaguely in seas that looked old and yet were new.

Hourly, he sought for the first sign of love in her eyes, for the first touch of sentiment; but if there was a point of weakness in her defence, it was not revealed to the hungry perception of the would-be conqueror.

And so they drifted on through the February chill, that seemed warm to them, through the light hours and the dark ones, quickly and surely to the day which was to call him cured of one ill and yet sorely afflicted by another.
Through it all he was saying to himself that it did not matter what her birth may have been, so long as she lived at this hour in his life, and yet a still, cool voice was whispering procrastination with ding-dong persistency through every avenue of his brain.

"Wait!" said the cool voice of prejudice.

His heart did not hear, but his brain did.