rted
face, as if she feared another.

Encouraged by so gentle a repulse, the tenderest things I said; and then,
with my other hand, drew aside the handkerchief that concealed the beauty
of beauties, and pressed with my burning lips the most charming breast
that ever my ravished eyes beheld.

A very contrary passion to that which gave her bosom so delightful a
swell, immediately took place. She struggled out of my encircling arms
with indignation. I detained her reluctant hand. Let me go, said she.
I see there is no keeping terms with you. Base encroacher! Is this the
design of your flattering speeches? Far as matters have gone, I will for
ever renounce you. You have an odious heart. Let me go, I tell you.

I was forced to obey, and she flung from me, repeating base, and adding
flattering, encroacher.

***

In vain have I urged by Dorcas for the promised favour of dining with her.
She would not dine at all. She could not.

But why makes she every inch of her person thus sacred?--So near the time
too, that she must suppose, that all will be my own by deed of purchase
and settlement?

She has read, no doubt, of the art of the eastern monarchs, who sequester
themselves from the eyes of their subjects, in order to excite their
adoration, when, upon some solemn occasions, they think fit to appear in
public.

But let me ask thee, Belford, whether (on these solemn occasions) the
preceding cavalcade; here a greater officer, and there a great minister,
with their satellites, and glaring equipages; do not prepare the eyes of
the wondering beholders, by degrees, to bear the blaze of canopy'd
majesty (what though but an ugly old man perhaps himself? yet) glittering
in the collected riches of his vast empire?

And should not my beloved, for her own sake, descend, by degrees, from
goddess-hood into humanity? If it be pride that restrains her, ought not
that pride to be punished? If, as in the eastern emperors, it be art as
well as pride, art is what she of all women need not use. If shame, what
a shame to be ashamed to communicate to her adorer's sight the most
admirable of her personal graces?

Let me perish, Belford, if I would not forego the brightest diadem in the
world, for the pleasure of seeing a twin Lovelace at each charming
breast, drawing from it his first sustenance; the pious task, for
physical reasons,* continued for one month and no more!

* In Pamela, Vol. III. Letter XXXII. these reaso