It was something more, something quite beyond that elementary impulse.
At any rate we loved, and one evening in the shelter of the solemn walls of the great Coliseum at Rome, which at that hour were shut to all except ourselves, we confessed our love.

I really think we must have chosen the spot by tacit but mutual consent because we felt it to be fitting.

It was so old, so impregnated with every human experience, from the direst crime of the tyrant who thought himself a god, to the sublimest sacrifice of the martyr who already was half a god; with every vice and virtue also which lies between these extremes, that it seemed to be the most fitting altar whereon to offer our hearts and all that caused them to beat, each to the other.
So Natalie and I were betrothed within a month of our first meeting.
Within three we were married, for what was there to prevent or delay?
Naturally Sir Alfred was delighted, seeing that he possessed but small private resources and I was able to make ample provision for his daughter who had hitherto shown herself somewhat difficult in this business of matrimony and now was bordering on her twenty-seventh year.
Everybody was delighted, everything went smoothly as a sledge sliding down a slope of frozen snow and the mists of time hid whatever might be at the end of that slope.

Probably a plain; at the worst the upward rise of ordinary life.
That is what we thought, if we thought at all.

Certainly we never dreamed of a precipice.