In that
instant, innocently as his sister might have taken it, she took
his hand. The soft clasp of her fingers, clinging round his,
roused his senses, fired his passion for her, swept out of his
mind the pure aspirations which had filled it but the moment
before, paralyzed his perception when it was just penetrating the
mystery of her disturbed manner and her strange words. All the
man in him trembled under the rapture of her touch. But the
thought of Horace was still present to him: his hand lay passive
in hers; his eyes looked uneasily away from her.
She innocently strengthened her clasp of his hand. She innocently
said to him, "Don't look away from me. Your eyes give me
courage."
His hand returned the pressure of hers. He tasted to the full the
delicious joy of looking at her. She had broken down his last
reserves of self-control. The thought of Horace, the sense of
honor, became obscured in him. In a moment more he might have
said the words which he would have deplored for the rest of his
life, if she had not stopped him by speaking first. "I have more
to say to you," she resumed abruptly, feeling the animating
resolution to lay her heart bare before him at last; "more, far
more, than I have said yet.
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