Woman-
like, she had gone straight to the practical point: Craig had
written instead of coming--he was, therefore, afraid of her.
Having written he had not fled, but had come--he was, therefore,
attracted by her still. Obviously the game lay in her own hands,
for what more could woman ask than that a man be both afraid and
attracted? A little management and she not only would save herself
from the threatened humiliation of being jilted--jilted by an
uncouth nobody of a Josh Craig!--but also would have him in
durance, to punish his presumption at her own good pleasure as to
time and manner. If Joshua Craig, hardy plodder in the arduous
pathway from plowboy to President, could have seen what was in the
mind so delicately and so aristocratically entempled in that
graceful, slender, ultra-feminine body of Margaret Severence's, as
she descended the stairs, putting fresh gloves upon her beautiful,
idle hands, he would have borrowed wings of the wind and would
have fled as from a gorgon.
But as she entered the room nothing could have seemed less
formidable except to the heart. Her spring dress--she was wearing
it for the first time--was of a pale green, suggesting the
draperies of islands of enchantment.
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