He held her face back from him....

"If you had lived a thousand years ago you would have had a thousand lovers, Jasmine.

Perhaps you did--who knows! And now you come down through the centuries purified by Time, to be my jasmine-flower." His lip trembled a little.

There was a strange melancholy in his eyes, belying the passion and rapture of his words.
In all their days together she had never seen him in this mood.

She had heard him storm about things at times, had watched his big impulses working; had drawn the thunder from his clouds; but there was something moving in him now which she had never seen before.