Yes, he had seized her, had crushed her madly in the embrace of his plowman arms.

But that seemed now a freak of courage, a drunken man's deed, wholly beyond the nerve of sobriety.
Then, on top of all this awe was his reverence for her as an aristocrat, a representative of people who had for generations been far removed above the coarse realities of the only life he knew.

And it was this adoration of caste that determined him.

He might overcome his awe of her person and dress, of her tangible trappings; but how could he ever hope to bridge the gulf between himself and her intangible superiorities?
He was ashamed of himself, enraged against himself for this feeling of worm gazing up at star.

It made a mockery of all his arrogant, noisy protestations of equality and democracy.
"The fault is not in my ideas," thought he; "THEY'RE all right.