This sudden decision to terminate my newspaper life in Chicago involved the problem of what to do about Alice. During these spring and summer days I had been amusing myself with her, imagining sometimes, because of her pretty face and figure and her soft clinging ways, that I was in love with her. By the lakes and of Chicago’s parks, on the lake shore at Lincoln Park where the white sails were to be seen, in Alice’s little room with the windows open and the lights out, or of a Sunday morning when her parents were away visiting and she was preparing my breakfast and flouring her nose and chin in the attempt—how happy we were! How we frivoled and kissed and made promises to ourselves concerning the future! We were like two children at times, and for a while I half that I would marry her. In a little while we were going everywhere together and she was planning her wedding trousseau, the little fineries she would have when we were married. We were to live on the south side near the lake in a tiny apartment. She described to me the costume she would wear, which was to be of satin of an ivory shade, with laces, veils, and stockings to match.  
But as spring wore on and I grew so restless I began to think not so much less of Alice as more of myself. I never saw her as anything but beautiful, tender, a delicate, almost perfect creature for some one to love and cherish. Once we went hand-in-hand over the lawns of Jackson Park of a Sunday afternoon. She was in a new white dress and dark blue hat. The day was warm and clear and a of swans was sailing grandly about the little lake. We sat down and watched them and the ducks, the rowers in green, blue and white boats, with the white in the center of the lake reflected in the water. All was colorful, gay.
 
“Oh, Dorse,” she said at one place, with a little sigh which moved me by its , “isn’t it lovely?”
 
“Beautiful.”
 
“We are so happy when we are together, aren’t we?”
 
“Yes.”
 
“Oh, I wish we were married! If we just had a little place of our own! You could come home to me, and I could make you such nice things.”
 
I promised her happy days to come, but even as I said it I knew it would not be. I did not think I could build a life on my salary ... I did not know that I wanted to. Life was too wide and full. She seemed to sense something of this from the very beginning, and clung close to me now as we walked, looking up into my eyes, smiling almost sadly. As the hours slipped away into dusk and the of evening suggested change and the end of many things she sighed again.
 
“Oh, Dorse,” she said as we reached her doorstep, “if we could just be together always and never part!”
 
“We will be,” I said, but I did not believe my own words.
 
It was on this spring night that she attempted to persuade me, not by words or any great craft but merely by a yielding pressure, to take her and make her mine. I fancy she thought that if she yielded to me and found herself ............