He pressed his arms tighter together across his breast, set his lips and held his breath, as his temptation, clad in a wondrous long white garment, wafting a sweet fragrance and waking a murmuring silken sound, came near to him, and passed him by. When Margaret had actually moved away from him, and thrown herself weakly into a low, deep chair, and he realized that his arms were still folded, his lips still set, he drew in his breath, with a long respiration that seemed to draw into his heart a mortal pain; and he knew that his practice had stood him in good stead, and that his strength had proved sufficient in his hour of need. It would have been only for a moment. All he wanted was to take her in his arms an instant, and kiss her just once, and then he could have let her go forever, and counted himself a happy man to have lived that moment’s life. That was all; but that he felt himself in honor bound to renounce, because he believed her to be pledged to another man. And he had accomplished the renunciation; but now that this was so, he felt an impatient rebellion against further discipline. The resistless torrent of his love and despair rushed over him, and nothing should keep him from speaking! Words could do her no harm, and there were words that burnt upon his lips, whose utterance alone, it seemed to him, could keep his brain from bursting. He opened his lips to speak, but the words refused to come. There was a spell in the silence that he felt powerless to break. The room was absolutely free from either sound or motion. Margaret had dropped her weary body sideways in the cushioned chair, with her long white robe sweeping behind her, and her face turned from him, so that only her profile was in view. The young man stood and looked at her, possessed by the sense of her nearness, enthralled by the spell of her beauty. He could see the rise and fall of her bosom under its covering of silk and fur, and there was a dejectedness in her attitude that made a passionate appeal to his tenderness. She was very pale, and her lowered lids and a little drooping at the corners of her mouth gave her lovely face a most plaintive look. She was tired too; the inertness of the pliant figure, with the motionless bare arms and relaxed, half-open hands, showed that plainly enough. Fragile and slight and weary as she was, how could she endure the battle of life alone, and who, of all men in the world, could strive and struggle for her as he could? The thought of her woman’s weakness was a keen delight to him at that moment. He had never felt himself so strong. With a quick motion that emphasized his thought, without interrupting the stillness, he threw out his right arm and clinched his hand with a conscious pleasure in his strength. Nerves and veins and muscles seemed to tingle with sentient animal force.