He liked to release his
robust imagination upon those charms of hers--those delicate,
refined beauties that filled him with longings, delicious in their
intensity, longings as primeval in kind as well as in force as
those that set delirious the savage hordes from the German forests
when they first poured down over the Alps and beheld the jewels
and marbles and round, smooth, soft women of Italy's ancient
civilization. But at the same time he had the unmistakable, the
terrifying feeling of dare-devil sacrilege. What were his coarse
hands doing, dabbling in silks and cobweb laces and embroideries?
Silk fascinated him; but, while he did not like calico so well, he
felt at home with it. Yes, he had seized her, had crushed her
madly in the embrace of his plowman arms. But that seemed now a
freak of courage, a drunken man's deed, wholly beyond the nerve of
sobriety.
Then, on top of all this awe was his reverence for her as an
aristocrat, a representative of people who had for generations
been far removed above the coarse realities of the only life he
knew. And it was this adoration of caste that determined him. He
might overcome his awe of her person and dress, of her tangible
trappings; but how could he ever hope to bridge the gulf between
himself and her intangible superiorities? He was ashamed of
himself, enraged against himself for this feeling of worm gazing
up at star.
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