All love transports contain an element of the ridiculous, I presume, but to each how very important. I will pass mine over with what I have already said, save this: that each little variation in her costume, however slight, in her coiffure, or the way she looked or walked amid new surroundings, all seemed to re-emphasize the perfection that I had discovered and was so fortunate as to possess. She gave me her photograph, which I framed in silver and hung in my room. I begged for a lock of her hair, and finding a bit of blue ribbon that I knew belonged to her purloined¹ that. She would not allow me to visit at Florissant, where she taught, being bashful about confessing this new relationship, but nevertheless, on several Sundays when she was at her home “up the State” I visited this glorious region, hallowed by her presence, and tried to decide for myself just where she lived and taught—her sacred rooms! A little later an exposition or State Fair was held in the enormous exposition building at Fourteenth and Olive streets, and here, when the Sousa concerts were first on, and later when the gay Veiled Prophets festivities began (a sort of Roman Harvest rejoicing, winding² up with a great parade and ball), I saw more of her than ever before. It was during this time, in a letter, that she confessed that she loved me. Before this, however, seeing that I made no progress in any other way, being allowed no intimacy³ beyond an occasional stolen kiss, I had proposed to her and been accepted with a kind of morbid⁴ formalism. I had had to ask her in the most definite way and be formally accepted as her affianced husband. Thereafter I squandered⁵ my last cent to purchase a diamond ring at wholesale⁶, secured through a friend on the Globe, and then indeed I felt myself set up in the world, as one who was destined⁷ to tread the conventional and peaceful ways of the majority.