“Her pretty name of Adina seemed to me to have somehow a mystic fitness to her personality. Behind a cold shyness, there seemed to lurk a tremulous promise to be franker when she knew you better.Adina is a strange child; she is fanciful without being capricious.She was stout and fresh-coloured, she laughed and talked rather loud, and generally, in galleries and temples, caused a good many stiff British necks to turn round.She had a mania for excursions, and at Frascati and Tivoli she inflicted her good-humoured ponderosity on diminutive donkeys with a relish which seemed to prove that a passion for scenery, like all our passions, is capable of making the best of us pitiless. Adina may not have the shoulders of the Venus of Milo...but I hope it will take more than a bauble like this to make her stoop.Adina espied the first violet of the year glimmering at the root of a cypress. She made haste to rise and gather it, and then wandered further, in the hope of giving it a few companions. Scrope sat and watched her as she moved slowly away, trailing her long shadow on the grass and drooping her head from side to side in her charming quest. It was not, I know, that he felt no impulse to join her; but that he was in love, for the moment, with looking at her from where he sat. Her search carried her some distance and at last she passed out of sight behind a bend in the villa wall.I don't pretend to be sure that I was particularly struck, from this time forward, with something strange in our quiet Adina. She had always seemed to me vaguely, innocently strange; it was part of her charm that in the daily noiseless movement of her life a mystic undertone seemed to murmur "You don't half know me! Perhaps we three prosaic mortals were not quite worthy to know her: yet I believe that if a practised man of the world had whispered to me, one day, over his wine, after Miss Waddington had rustled away from the table, that there was a young lady who, sooner or later, would treat her friends to a first class surprise, I should have laid my finger on his sleeve and told him with a smile that he phrased my own thought. .."That beautiful girl," I said, "seems to me agitated and preoccupied.""That beautiful girl is a puzzle. I don't know what's the matter with her; it's all very painful; she's a very strange creature. I never dreamed there was an obstacle to our happiness--to our union. She has never protested and promised; it's not her way, nor her nature; she is always humble, passive, gentle; but always extremely grateful for every sign of tenderness. Till within three or four days ago, she seemed to me more so than ever; her habitual gentleness took the form of a sort of shrinking, almost suffering, deprecation of my attentions, my petits soins, my lovers nonsense. It was as if they oppressed and mortified her--and she would have liked me to bear more lightly. I did not see directly that it was not the excess of my devotion, but my devotion itself--the very fact of my love and her engagement that pained her. When I did it was a blow in the face. I don't know what under heaven I've done! Women are fathomless creatures. And yet Adina is not capricious, in the common sense....So these are peines d'amour?" he went on, after brooding a moment. "I didn't know how fiercely I was in love!" Scrope stood staring at her as she thrust out the crumpled note: that she meant that Adina--that Adina had left us in the night--was too large a horror for his unprepared sense...."Good-bye to everything! Think me crazy if you will. I could never explain. Only forget me and believe that I am happy, happy, happy! Adina Beati."...Love is said to be par excellence the egotistical passion; if so Adina was far gone. "I can't promise to forget you," I said; "you and my friend here deserve to be remembered!”

“Marius made a movement.'Oh, don't go!' she said. 'It won't be long.'She was sitting almost upright, but her voice was very low and broken by hiccoughs. At moments she struggled for breath. Raising her face as near as she could to Marius', she said, with a strange expression:'Look, I can't cheat you. I have a letter for you in my pocket. I've had it since yesterday. I was asked to post it, but I didn't. I didn't want you to get it. But you might be angry with me when we meet again. Because we shall all meet again, shan't we? Take your letter.'With a convulsive movement she seized Marius' hand with her own injured one, but without seeming to feel the pain, and guided it to her pocket.'Take it,' she said.Marius took out the letter, and she made a little gesture of satisfaction and acceptance.'Now you must promise me something for my trouble...' She paused.'What?' asked Marius.'Do you promise?''Yes, I promise.''You must kiss me on the forehead after I'm dead...I shall know.'She let her head fall back on his knees; her lids fluttered, and then she was motionless. He thought that the sad soul had left her. But then, when he thought it was all over, she slowly opened her eyes that were now deep with the shadow of death, and said in a voice so sweet that it seemed already to come from another world:'You know, Monsieur Marius, I think I was a little bit in love with you.'She tried to smile, and died.”

“I don't believe that." She seems like suck a force,this reasonable girl who kills with a turn of her fingers. She would have left all this behind, if she had the chance. "I honestly don't remember," she sighs "I don't think I was strong in life. Now it seems like I loved every moment, that every breath was charmed and crisp." she clasps her hands comically to her chest and breaths in deep through her nose, then blows it out in a huff. "I probably didn't. For all my dreams and fancies, I can't recall being...what would you call it? Perky?”

“From the first day I met her, she was the only woman to me. Every day of that voyage I loved her more, and many a time since have I kneeled down in the darkness of the night watch and kissed the deck of that ship because I knew her dear feet had trod it. She was never engaged to me. She treated me as fairly as ever a woman treated a man. I have no complaint to make. It was all love on my side, and all good comradeship and friendship on hers. When we parted she was a free woman, but I could never again be a free man.”

“But still I was curious to know what sort of an explanation she would have given me—or would give now, if I pressed her for it—how much she would confess, and how she would endeavour to excuse herself. I longed to know what to despise, and what to admire in her; how much to pity, and how much to hate;—and, what was more, I would know. I would see her once more, and fairly satisfy myself in what light to regard her, before we parted. Lost to me she was, for ever, of course; but still I could not bear to think that we had parted, for the last time, with so much unkindness and misery on both sides. That last look of hers had sunk into my heart; I could not forget it. But what a fool I was! Had she not deceived me, injured me—blighted my happiness for life? ‘Well, I’ll see her, however,’ was my concluding resolve, ‘but not to-day: to-day and to-night she may think upon her sins, and be as miserable as she will: to-morrow I will see her once again, and know something more about her. The interview may be serviceable to her, or it may not. At any rate, it will give a breath of excitement to the life she has doomed to stagnation, and may calm with certainty some agitating thoughts.”

“You’re so cute when you’re jealous,” I say. She looks at me, her resolve melting with my words. I take her face in my hands and gently press my lips to hers. She sighs a quiet, defeated sigh into my mouth and relents, parting her lips for me. I run my hands down her arms and to her waist, then pull her out of the chair and on top of me as I lean back onto the bed.I place one hand on the small of her back, pressing her into me, and my other hand I run through her hair, grabbing the back of her head. I kiss her hard as I roll her onto her back, proving to her that she has absolutely nothing to be jealous of. As soon as I’m on top of her, she places her hands on my cheeks and forces my face apart from hers.“So your lips touched someone else’s lips? After our first kiss?”I fall back onto the bed beside her. “Lake, stop it. Stop thinking about it,” I say.“I can’t, Will.” She turns to me and makes that damn pouty face she knows I can’t refuse. “I need to know. In my head all I can picture is you taking some girl out on this perfect date and making her grilled cheese sandwiches and playing “would you rather” with her and sharing seriously intense moments with her, then kissing the hell out of her at the end of the night.”Her description of our first date causes me to laugh. I lean over and press my lips to her ear and whisper, “Is that what I did to you? I kissed the hell out of you?”She pulls her neck away and shoots me a glare, letting me know she isn’t backing down until she gets her way. “Fine,” I say, pulling back. “If I tell you all about it will you promise to let me kiss the hell out of you again?”“Promise,” she says.”