With the quickness of jealousy, he had guessed at the meaning there might lie in Emily's reluctance to hear him, but he dared not entertain the thought; it was his passionate instinct to plead it down.

Whatever it might be that she had in mind, she must first hear him.

As he spoke, he watched her features with the eagerness of desire, of fear; to do so was but to inflame his passion.

It was an extraordinary struggle between the force of violent appetite and the constraint of love in the higher sense.

How the former had been excited, it would be hard to explain.
Wilfrid Athel had submitted to the same influence.