She wouldn't have said it was concupiscence, but rather something else entirely. What she felt for him was not lust: it was more than that. It was love. She was madly, deeply, truly in love with him. She loved him in a way that she had never loved anyone before him—of this, she was certain. She loved him the way the irradiant sun loved the sublime day and the resplendent moon loved the beauteous night. She loved him the way the rain loved storms, the way the clouds loved the miserable sky, the way the whistling wind loved the autumn leaves.

She was so very young—she knew that she was supposedly too young to fall in love, or, frankly, to even know what love was. But regardless of when she had been born, her soul was much too old to be that of a child; and she knew with all of her heart and mind that she was in love with him.