Since that first stolen kiss, she had held off from him, alluring yet
unapproachable, and this gentle, but obstinate, resistance had inflamed
him to a point which he admitted, in the cold grey morning before he had
breakfasted, to have become positively dangerous. Ardently susceptible
to beauty, the freedom of his life had bred in him an almost equal
worship of the unattainable. If that first kiss had stirred his fancy,
her subsequent repulse had established her influence. The stubborn
virtue, which was a part of the inherited fibre of her race, had
achieved a result not unworthy of the most finished coquette. Against
his desire for possession there battled the instinctive chastity that
was woven into the structure of Sarah Revercomb's granddaughter. Hardly
less violent than the natural impulse against which it warred, it gave
Blossom an advantage, which the obvious weakness of her heart had
helped to increase. It was as though she yearned toward him while she
resisted--as though she feared him most in the moment that she repulsed
him.
"Good God! how beautiful you are and how cold!" he exclaimed.
"I am not cold.
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