slippery, a serpent, a winding hare; with the fear that she
might slip from him, betray, deny him, deliver him to ridicule, after
he had won his way to her over every barrier. During his proudest
exaltations in success, when his eyes were sparkling, there was a wry
twitch inward upon his heart of hearts.

But if she was a hare, he was a hunter, little inclining to the chase
now for mere physical recreation. She had roused the sportsman's passion
as well as the man's; he meant to hunt her down, and was not more
scrupulous than our ancient hunters, who hunted for a meal and hunted to
kill, with none of the later hesitations as to circumventing, trapping,
snaring by devices, and the preservation of the animal's coat spotless.
Let her be lured from her home, or plucked from her home, and if
reluctant, disgraced, that she may be dependent utterly on the man
stooping to pick her up! He was equal to the projecting of a scheme
socially infamous, with such fanatical intensity did the thought of
his losing the woman harass him, and the torrent of his passion burst
restraint to get to her to enfold her--this in the same hour of the
original wild monster's persistent and sober exposition of the texts of
the law with the voice of a cultivated modern gentleman; and, let it
be said, with a modern gentleman's design to wed a wife in honour. All
means were to be tried. His eye burned on his prize, mindless of what
she was dragged through, if there was resistance, or whether by the hair
of her head or her skirts, or how she was obtained. His interpretation
of the law was for the powers of earth, and other plans were to
propitiate the powers under the earth, and certain distempered groanings
wrenched from him at intervals he addressed (after they were out of him,
reflectively) to the powers above, so that nothing of him should be lost
which might get aid of anything mundane, infernal, or celestial.

Thus it is when Venus bites a veritable ancient male. She puts her venom
in a magnificent beast, not a pathetic Phaedra. She does it rarely, for
though to be loved by a bitten giant is one of the dreams of woman,
the considerate Mother of Love knows how needful it is to protect the
sentiment of the passion and save them from an exhibition of the fires
of that dragon's breath. Do they not fly shrieking when they behold it?
Barely are they able to read of it. Men, too, accustomed to minor
doses of the goddess, which moderate, soften, counteract,