Of this was he thinking as he tossed on the couch
in the library; he had thought of it too much since leaving
Heliodora yesterday afternoon. It began to nettle him that his grief
should be for her merely an amusement. Never having seen the Gothic
maiden, whose beauty outshone hers as sunrise outdoes the lighting
of a candle, this wanton Greek was capable of despising him in good
earnest, and Basil had never been of those who sit easy under scorn.
He felt something chafe and grow hot within him, and recalled the
days when he, and not Heliodora, had indulged contempt--to his
mind a much more natural posture of affairs, The animal that is in
every man had begun to stir; it urged him to master and crush and
tame this woman, whom, indeed, he held rather in hate than in any
semblance of love. Her beauty, her sensuality, had power over him
still; he resented such danger of subjection, and encouraged himself
in a barbarism of mood, which permitted him to think that even in
yielding he might find the way of his revenge.
There had been a long silence since his reply to the hint offered by
Decius.
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