On September 8 I left my house with the firm purpose of deciding the matter. We met each other in the street outside their house. She said there was nobody at home. I was foolhardy enough to look upon that as an invitation, just the opportunity I wanted. I went in with her. We stood alone in the living room. She was a little uneasy. I asked her to play me something as she usually did. She did so; but that did not help me. Then suddenly I took the music away and closed it, not without a certain violence, threw it down on the piano and said: “Oh, what do I care about music now! It is you I am searching for, it is you whom I have sought after for two years.” She was silent. I did nothing else to make an impression upon her; I even warned her against myself, against my melancholy.
Søren Kierkegaard, proposing to his beloved Regina, Journals, 1841