In this particular case of Margaret Severence and Joshua Craig, while his awe of her was an advantage, it was also a disadvantage.

It attracted him; it perilously repelled him.

He liked to release his robust imagination upon those charms of hers--those delicate, refined beauties that filled him with longings, delicious in their intensity, longings as primeval in kind as well as in force as those that set delirious the savage hordes from the German forests when they first poured down over the Alps and beheld the jewels and marbles and round, smooth, soft women of Italy's ancient civilization.

But at the same time he had the unmistakable, the terrifying feeling of dare-devil sacrilege.

What were his coarse hands doing, dabbling in silks and cobweb laces and embroideries?
Silk fascinated him; but, while he did not like calico so well, he felt at home with it.