| An exclamation uttered in these words or similar in sensationalist English novels of the 1920s and 1930s. According to the conventions of this type of cheap fiction, the male protagonist (often a dark handsome cruel Arab sheik who turns out to be a disguised English nobleman bronzed by the sun of the desert climes to which he's exiled himself) faces the heroine (often a jodhpurs-clad flame-haired headstrong beauty with a level gaze that infuriates the sheik) in a furious argument trumped-up by the author in order to bring the characters within arms' length of each other. As the man lays his hands on the woman's shoulders (in order to shake some sense into her), their gazes lock powerfully together and all pretence at antagonism vanishes as if gone with the wind. "My God, don't tempt me!" the man says, his voice husky with suppressed passion. Whereupon the heroine, bosom heaving, becomes limp in his arms and he rains fierce kisses upon her burning lips. She is never seen in jodhpurs again. A tradition popularized by E.M. Hull and Elinor Glyn, who handed the torch to Barbara Cartland and others of her ilk. | 
