on'? Having marched
in, how could you have held your position, unless"--

"Oh, a man doesn't necessarily drive a woman away because he isn't in
love with her."

"Yet that was what you thought I had done to you last night."

"Yes, but I didn't suppose you would take the trouble to do it again.
And if you had, I should have only loved you the more. I thought you
would most likely be rather amused, rather touched, by my importunity. I
thought you would take a listless advantage, make a plaything of me--the
diversion of a few idle hours in summer, and then, when you had tired
of me, would cast me aside, forget me, break my heart. I desired nothing
better than that. That is what I must have been vaguely hoping for. But
I had no definite scheme. I wanted to be with you and I came to you. It
seems years ago, now! How my heart beat as I waited on the doorstep! 'Is
his Grace at home?' 'I don't know. I'll inquire. What name shall I say?'
I saw in the girl's eyes that she, too, loved you. Have YOU seen that?"

"I have never looked at her," said the Duke.

"No wonder, then, that she loves you," sighed Zuleika. "She read my
secret at a glance. Women who love the same man have a kind of bitter
freemasonry. We resented each other. She envied me my beauty, my dress.
I envied the little fool her privilege of being always near to you.
Loving you, I could conceive no life sweeter than hers--to be always
near you; to black your boots, carry up your coals, scrub your doorstep;
always to be working for you, hard and humbly and without thanks. If you
had refused to see me, I would have bribed that girl with all my jewels
to cede me her position."

The Duke made a step towards her. "You would do it still," he said in a
low voice.

Zuleika raised her eyebrows. "I would not offer her one garnet," she
said, "now."

"You SHALL love me again," he cried. "I will force you to. You said just
now that you had ceased to love me because I was just like other men. I
am not. My heart is no tablet of mere wax, from which an instant's heat
can dissolve whatever impress it may bear, leaving it blank and soft
for another impress, and another, and another. My heart is a bright hard
gem, proof against any die. Came Cupid, with one of his arrow-points
for graver, and what he cut on the gem's surface never can be effaced.
There, deeply and forever, your image is intagliated. No years, nor
fires, nor cataclysm of total Nature, can efface from that great ge