"That you should have dared!" she withered him.
"To love you quite so suddenly ?" he inquired, and misquoted: "'Whoever loved at all, that loved not at first sight ?' Hortensia!" "You have not the right to my name, sir." "Yet I offer you the right to mine," he answered, with humble reproach.
"You shall be punished," she promised him, and in high dudgeon left him.
"Punished?
Oh, cruel! Can you then be-- "'Unsoft to him who's smooth to thee?
Tigers and bears, I've heard some say, For proffered love will love repay."' But she was gone.

He looked up at the moon, and took it into his confidence to reproach it.

"'Twas your white face beglamored me," he told it aloud.

"See, how execrable a beginning I've made, and, therefore, how excellent!" And he laughed, but entirely without mirth.
He remained pacing in the moonlight, very thoughtful, and, for once, it seemed, not at all amused.

His life appeared to be tangling itself beyond unravelling, and his vaunted habit of laughter scarce served at present to show him the way out..