nything on earth for you that I can, George."

"I know you will, dearest, and you don't honestly care more for your
family, do you?"

"I love you better than all the rest of the world put together. There
are times when I think it must be wrong to love any man as much as I
love you. My grandmother used to say that when you loved like that you
'tempted Providence.' Isn't it dreadful to believe that you could tempt
Providence by loving?"

He kissed her throat where a loosened strand of dark hair had fallen
against the whiteness.

"Will you do what I ask, Gabriella?"

So it was all to begin over again! He had not really given in, he had
not really yielded even while he was kissing her. She closed her eyes,
leaning her head on his shoulder. For a moment she felt as if a physical
pain were pressing into her forehead.

"Will you do it, Gabriella?" It was as if he put his soul into his
voice, wooing her tenderly away from her better judgment. He was testing
his power to dominate her; and never had she felt it so vividly, never
had her will been so incapable of resisting him as at that instant.
Moving slightly in his arms she looked at the clear red brown of his
throat, at his sensitive mouth, with the faint dent in the lower lip, at
his bright blue eyes, which had grown soft while he pleaded. His
physical power over her was complete, and he knew it. Her flesh had
become as soft as flowers in his arms, while her eyes, like dark flames,
trembled and fell away from his look.

"It isn't only the thing itself, darling, but I don't like you to refuse
me. It hurts me that you won't do what I ask of you."

"If it were anything else, George."

"But it isn't anything else. It is just that I want you to myself--all
to myself, after we are married."

"Don't ask me, dearest. If you only knew how it makes me suffer."

Her voice was a caress when she answered, but, as he told himself
passionately, she had not yielded an inch. Once again he had run against
the iron hidden under the bloom.

"

Martha Finley (1828 - 1909) was a teacher and author of numerous works, the most well known being the 28 volume Elsie Dinsmore series which was published over a span of 38 years. The daughter of Presbyterian minister Dr. James Brown Finley and his wife and cousin Maria Theresa Brown Finley, she was born on April 26th, 1828 in Chillicothe, Ohio. Finley wrote many of her books under the psodonym Martha Farquharson. She died in 1909 in Elkton, Maryland, where she moved in 1876.

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