Terry was a past master in this process.

He tried it here, and Alima was so affronted, so repelled, that it was weeks before he got near enough to try again.
The more coldly she denied him, the hotter his determination; he was not used to real refusal.

The approach of flattery she dismissed with laughter, gifts and such "attentions" we could not bring to bear, pathos and complaint of cruelty stirred only a reasoning inquiry.

It took Terry a long time.
I doubt if she ever accepted her strange lover as fully as did Celis and Ellador theirs.

He had hurt and offended her too often; there were reservations.
But I think Alima retained some faint vestige of long-descended feeling which made Terry more possible to her than to others; and that she had made up her mind to the experiment and hated to renounce it.
However it came about, we all three at length achieved full understanding, and solemnly faced what was to them a step of measureless importance, a grave question as well as a great happiness; to us a strange, new joy.
Of marriage as a ceremony they knew nothing.