In the very act of doing this he had determined to kiss her; but something about the extraordinary loveliness of her face, when she did confront him, deterred him.

This was a surprise to himself at the moment; but later, analyzing it, he came to the conclusion that although beauty, up to a certain point, is provocative of lust, beyond a certain point it is destructive of lust; and it is this, whether the possessor of such beauty be in a chaste mood or not.

If only⁠—so he thought to himself later⁠—Gerda’s face had been a little less flawless in its beauty, the beauty of her body would have remained as maddening to his senses as it was at the beginning. But the more he had seen of her the more beautiful her face had grown; until it had now reached that magical level of loveliness which absorbs with a kind of absoluteness the whole aesthetic sense, paralyzing the erotic sensibility.