Paul's courtship of Ida really began the night when he took her in his
arms as his promised wife, for although she had called him her lover
before, his devotion, while impassioned enough, had been too distant and
wholly reverential to be called a wooing. But the night of their
betrothal his love had caught from her lips a fire that was of earth, and
it was no longer as a semi-spiritual being that he worshipped her, but as
a woman whom it was no sacrilege to kiss a thousand times a day, not upon
her hand, her sleeve, or the hem of her dress, but full upon the soft
warm mouth.
This transformation of the devotee into the lover on his part was
attended by a corresponding change in Ida's manner toward him. A model
relieved from a strained pose could not show more evident relief than she
did in stepping down from the pedestal of a tutelary saint, where he had
placed her, to be loved and caressed like an ordinary woman, for if the
love had at first been all on his side, it certainly was not now.
"I'm so glad," she said one day, "that you have done with worshipping me.
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