and his reason swore that he had her
fast. He had seen and felt his power over her; his reason told him by
what had been that it must be. Could he doubt? He battled for his reason.
Doubt was an extinguishing wave, and he clung to his book of the Law,
besieging Church and State with it, pointing to texts of the law which
proved her free to choose her lord and husband for herself, expressing
his passionate love by his precise interpretation of the law: and still
with the cold sentience gaining on him, against the current of his
tumultuous blood and his hurried intelligence, of her being actually what
he had named her in moments of playful vision--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,
s