Convict B14

Excerpt from Book:

There was nothing of the ascetic in Gardiner; he was warm-blooded and inflammable, as he had already found to his cost. Since he could not get away from his temperament, he got round it, by avoiding women, and by keeping any necessary intercourse free from the first beginnings of sentiment. As his will was stronger than his passions, except when they got out of hand and were running away, this plan had worked well. But he could not avoid Dorothea; and when she slipped her hand through his arm she undid the work of years, and stirred ashes into flame. Passion, unlike love, is a sudden growth, and it was passion he felt: that inexplicable force which draws men and women together, often in defiance of every natural taste and sentiment. The situation was alluring. Dorothea was not merely a pretty girl, she was a personage, as she had very soon made known in the hotel; a star far away in the sky above Gardiner's head. Yet the touch of his hand set her shaking like a reed. Gardiner was not coxcomb enough to imagine that she had fallen in love with his fine eyes; but he was prepared to stake his soul that for some undiscoverable reason she was half afraid of him. What man could resist that lure?