Cowperwood was enchanted¹. He kept the proposed tryst² with eagerness and found her all that he had hoped. She was sweeter, more colorful, more elusive³ than anybody he had ever known. In their charming apartment on the North Side which he at once engaged, and where he sometimes spent mornings, evenings, afternoons, as opportunity afforded, he studied her with the most critical eye and found her almost flawless. She had that boundless⁴ value which youth and a certain insouciance⁵ of manner contribute. There was, delicious to relate, no melancholy⁶ in her nature, but a kind of innate⁷ sufficiency which neither looked forward to nor back upon troublesome ills. She loved beautiful things, but was not extravagant⁸; and what interested him and commanded his respect was that no urgings of his toward prodigality⁹, however subtly advanced, could affect her. She knew what she wanted, spent carefully, bought tastefully, arrayed herself in ways which appealed to him as the flowers did. His feeling for her became at times so great that he wished, one might almost have said, to destroy it—to appease¹⁰ the urge and allay¹¹ the pull in himself, but it was useless. The charm of her endured. His transports would leave her refreshed apparently¹², prettier, more

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