"If she accepts me, I'll make it impossible for her not to be happy," he said to himself, in all the fine unselfishness of passion--not divine unselfishness but human--not the kind we read about and pretend to have--and get a savage attack of bruised vanity if we are accused of not having it--no, but just the kind we have and show in our daily lives--the unselfishness of longing to make happy those whom it would make us happier to see happy. "She may think she cares for this young clerk--" so ran his thoughts--"but she doesn't know her own mind. When she is mine, I'll take her in hand as a gardener does a delicate rare flower--and, by Heaven, how I shall make her blossom and bloom!"

ABOUT