THE STEADFAST HEART
pressed his lips, told himself he was very stern and righteous, and girded up his loins to demand his due…. Then Lydia appeared in the door.
She was lovely—the lovelier for a certain wanness, a trace of pallor; for the scarce-discernible shadows under her eyes. She was a picture of desire, vivid even in the extreme pensiveness which rested upon her. The suddenness of her appearance, the loveliness of the unheralded vision fired Malcolm’s veins…. He forgot everything save her desirability, his hunger to hold her in his arms and to subject her lips to the touch of his passion.
Before she could be warned to draw back, Mal strode across the room and clutched her in his arms, roughly, baldly, crudely. It was a seizure, a violation—an idiocy. He crushed her to him with trembling, hot arms, and despite her sudden wild struggles to free herself, he kissed her lips, her eyes, her hair, her throat…. And then, the fire having spent its force in explosion, he stood appalled, frightened, holding her because he did not know how to let her go.
Lydia tore herself away and stood an instant white as the lace in the window behind her, white except for her lips which burned a curious carmine, and her eyes which blazed with a light which was impossibly green—the green of trapped fury. She stood rigid, immovable, as if
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