Explore "The Cords of Vanity" by James Branch Cabell on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
She told me not long after this, "When I saw Gladys loved you, of course I loved you too. " And I hereby soberly record the statement that to have a woman fall thoroughly in love with him is the most uncomfortable experience which can ever befall any man.
I am tolerably sure I never made any amorous declaration. Rather, it simply bewildered me to observe the shameless and irrational infatuation this woman presently bore for me, and before it I was powerless. When I told her frankly I did not love her, had never loved her, had no intention of ever loving her, she merely bleated, "You are cruel! " and wept. When I attempted to restrain her paroxysms of anguish, she took it as a retraction of what I had told her.