Prologue:

It was conventional, how we met. A natural progression in my life. I was seventeen and it was at a Christmas party thrown by an elder from my father's parsonage.

Adam had just moved into town to make something of himself, as most of the men in San Francisco, and was a recent attendee of our church.

All the young women there were of course infatuated with him. A handsome, moral, single, young man with all the potential of the future on his shoulders. I thought him a kind, gentle man but on the whole, rather dull and put him out of my mind.

The very next day however, he came calling to our home where he sat with my father in his study for hours discussing theology and economics. Their voices carried throughout the house as a low but constant murmur, making it clear that they were the both of them very thoroughly engrossed in either topic, but when I entered to bring refreshments, I heard his argument slip on his tongue and his felt his eyes on me, though I kept my gaze down.

And apparently my father also noticed, because during dinner that night he went on and on about the wonderful qualities that Adam Ewing possessed. And why shouldn't he? For they were completely like-minded in all things.

A few days later, Adam came by again, but this time to ask my father if he could court me. My father assented and I spent every weekend and some weekdays in his company. He told me about all his dreams and plans, he marveled at my purity and beauty and praised my father's mind, but I must confess my own mind was quite elsewhere in all the time I spent in his company.

At the end of the month I accepted the inevitable. My father told me that Adam had asked for my hand and he had consented wholeheartedly. Clasping my hands in his tightly, he told me that he was so happy for me and not to mess this up. Shrinking into myself, I nodded.

We were married the first of the week.