When I’d stepped forward and looked into his face, there had been a light in it—call it admiration, or desire, or the wistful beginnings of love. If I’d been wiser, I might have been able to call forth that love and, in that way, deflected the danger of the moment—a moment that would turn out to be far more important than I imagined. But I was young and afraid, and my ill-chosen words (words I would regret all my life) quenched that light forever.
