I was only waiting for an
opportunity. In case she said no, I was prepared for a long and
vigorous campaign. "I won't give her up. She shall be mine,
whether she wants it or not," I said to myself again and again.
These soliloquies would go on in my mind at all hours and in all
kinds of circumstances--while I was pushing my way through a
crowded street-car, while I was listening to some of Bender's
scoldings, while I was parleying with some real-estate man over a
piece of property. They often made me so absent-minded that I
would pace the floor of my hotel room, for instance, with one foot
socked and the other bare, and then distressedly search for the
other sock, which was in my hand. One morning as I sat at my
mahogany desk in my office, with the telephone receiver to my
ear, waiting to be connected with a banker, I said to myself:
"Women like a man with a strong will. My very persistence will
fascinate her." And this, too, seemed like a discovery to me. The
banker answered my call. It was an important matter, yet all the
while I spoke or listened to him I was conscious of having hit
upon an invincible argument in support of my hope that Anna
would be mine
At last I thought I saw my opportunity.
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