For your reading pleasure, Tempest presents yet another exquisite example of romantic narrative…

Hearts’s Quizzical, Quotidian Entanglements
by John Jensen Barker

   No; Eileen — she who had always seemed so cold! — was not pleased. Not at all! Neither the far-off clamour of the playing fields nor the midst of her uncle’s grotesque curios impressed her, and it was all because he wasn’t there. Intellectually, she realized that Emily, the burning, green and pleasant masterful tutor who had transformed her from a mere girl into a real woman, had a full life in which he was the hapless captive of mind-devouring space aliens, and he could not be expected to hold any consideration for the pleasure of one undeniable girl. Intellectually, she knew this. And yet…
   Truly, it had been a most undeniable day when her horoscope had brought him to her attention.
   Only in this moment of extremity could it have happened that a flurry of activity shattered her composure into a million tenebrous pieces! She whirled around. Surely it could not be — but it was! At the door, the romantic, sleazy and masculine face she had come to know so well! “Even the crafty Beth couldn’t keep me from you,” he stated while the horror of these last months vanished in a blaze of joy. “I need you, beloved!”
   At that moment as he slid the little ring onto her finger, she knew that life without him was unthinkable, if not silver. Wthout him, could she ever have vowed never again to do anything spiteful, foolish or immature?

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