then, as he pronounced the last three words, she had clasped her hands to her face and with a wild sob darted away from him. She was leaning now against the window, her head bowed and her shoulders quivering.
The Duke came softly behind her. “Why should you cry? Why should you turn away from me? Did I frighten you with the suddenness of my words? I am not versed in the tricks of wooing. I should have been more patient. But I love you so much that I could hardly have waited. A secret hope that you loved me too emboldened me, compelled me. You DO love me. I know it. And, knowing it, I do but ask you to give yourself to me, to be my wife. Why should you cry? Why should you shrink from me? Dear, if there were anything... any secret... if you had ever loved and been deceived, do you think I should honour you the less deeply, should not cherish you the more tenderly? Enough for me, that you are mine. Do you think I should ever reproach you for anything that may have—”
Zuleika turned on him. “How dare you?” she gasped. “How dare you speak to me like that?”
The Duke reeled back. Horror had come into his eyes. “You do not love me!” he cried.
“LOVE you?” she retorted. “YOU?”
“You no longer love me. Why? Why?”
“What do you mean?”
“You loved me. Don’t trifle with me. You came to me loving me with all your heart.”
“How do you know?”
“Look in the glass.” She went at his bidding. He followed her. “You see them?” he said, after a long pause. Zuleika nodded. The two pearls quivered to her nod.
“They were white when you came to me,” he sighed. “They were white because you loved me. From them it was that I knew you loved me even as I loved you. But their old colours have come back to them. That is how I know that your love for me is dead.”
Zuleika stood gazing pensively, twitching the two
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