Life was to be no longer a period of obedience to laws which the Torah had laid down; it was to be a long resistance against desirable things that she yearned for but which she dared not have.
She learned at this moment that she could be her own chief stumbling-block, and that love, the most precious illumination in every life, might be a destruction and a consuming fire.

She looked at this man, who lounged beside her, with a new sensation.

He was winsome, and therefore the more perilous.

That smooth insulting stranger whom this man had revealed as her husband with all his violence and license was a humble and harmless thing compared to this one, who had snared her by his care of her and by his charming self.
She felt a desire to cry out for Momus to take her back to the inner chamber of the shut house in Ascalon, away from her danger to herself and from the sight of the man who had done her no harm--yet.
She did not know how plainly all this wrote itself on her candid face.
Wise pupil of that unbridled school, the city of Diana, he could read in that slight frown on her forehead and the pathetic curve of her lips, that she was contented with him--that she was not glad to go on to that husband in Jerusalem.

He was near to her before she knew he had moved.
"After all," he was saying in a low voice, "I am glad you are going to Jerusalem.