was
some remorse on my account, too. Leonora told me that Florence said
there was--for Leonora knew all about it, and once went so far as to
ask her how she could do a thing so infamous. She excused herself on
the score of an overmastering passion. Well, I always say that an
overmastering passion is a good excuse for feelings. You cannot help
them. And it is a good excuse for straight actions--she might have
bolted with the fellow, before or after she married me. And, if they had
not enough money to get along with, they might have cut their throats,
or sponged on her family, though, of course, Florence wanted such a lot
that it would have suited her very badly to have for a husband a clerk
in a dry-goods store, which was what old Hurlbird would have made of
that fellow. He hated him. No, I do not think that there is much excuse
for Florence.

God knows. She was a frightened fool, and she was fantastic, and I
suppose that, at that time, she really cared for that imbecile. He
certainly didn't care for her. Poor thing.... At any rate, after I had
assured her that the "Pocahontas" was a steady ship, she just said:
"You'll have to look after me in certain ways--like Uncle Hurlbird is
looked after. I will tell you how to do it." And then she stepped over
the sill, as if she were stepping on board a boat. I suppose she had
burnt hers!

I had, no doubt, eye-openers enough. When we re-entered the Hurlbird
mansion at eight o'clock the Hurlbirds were just exhausted. Florence had
a hard, triumphant air. We had got married about four in the morning
and had sat about in the woods above the town till then, listening to a
mocking-bird imitate an old tom-cat. So I guess Florence had not found
getting married to me a very stimulating process. I had not found
anything much more inspiring to say than how glad I was, with
variations. I think I was too dazed. Well, the Hurlbirds were too dazed
to say much. We had breakfast together, and then Florence went to pack
her grips and things. Old Hurlbird took the opportunity to read me a
full-blooded lecture, in the style of an American oration, as to the
perils for young American girlhood lurking in the European jungle. He
said that Paris was full of snakes in the grass, of which he had had
bitter experience. He concluded, as they always do, poor, dear old
things, with the aspiration that all American women should one day be
sexless--though that is not the way they put it.. ..

Well, we made