m
your image."

"My dear Duke," said Zuleika, "don't be so silly. Look at the matter
sensibly. I know that lovers don't try to regulate their emotions
according to logic; but they do, nevertheless, unconsciously conform
with some sort of logical system. I left off loving you when I found
that you loved me. There is the premiss. Very well! Is it likely that I
shall begin to love you again because you can't leave off loving me?"

The Duke groaned. There was a clatter of plates outside, and she whom
Zuleika had envied came to lay the table for luncheon.

A smile flickered across Zuleika's lips; and "Not one garnet!" she
murmured.

V

Luncheon passed in almost unbroken silence. Both Zuleika and the Duke
were ravenously hungry, as people always are after the stress of any
great emotional crisis. Between them, they made very short work of
a cold chicken, a salad, a gooseberry-tart and a Camembert. The Duke
filled his glass again and again. The cold classicism of his face had
been routed by the new romantic movement which had swept over his soul.
He looked two or three months older than when first I showed him to my
reader.

He drank his coffee at one draught, pushed back his chair, threw away
the cigarette he had just lit. "Listen!" he said.

Zuleika folded her hands on her lap.

"You do not love me. I accept as final your hint that you never will
love me. I need not say--could not, indeed, ever say--how deeply, deeply
you have pained me. As lover, I am rejected. But that rejection," he
continued, striking the table, "is no stopper to my suit. It does but
drive me to the use of arguments. My pride shrinks from them. Love,
however, is greater than pride; and I, John, Albert, Edward, Claude,
Orde, Angus, Tankerton,* Tanville-Tankerton,** fourteenth Duke of
Dorset, Marquis of Dorset, Earl of Grove, Earl of Chastermaine, Viscount
Brewsby, Baron Grove, Baron Petstrap, and Baron Wolock, in the Peerage
of England, offer you my hand. Do not interrupt me. Do not toss your
head. Consider well what I am saying. Weigh the advantages you would
gain by acceptance of my hand. Indeed, they are manifold and tremendous.
They are also obvious: do not shut your eyes to them. You, Miss Dobson,
what are you? A conjurer, and a vagrant; without means, save such as you
can earn by the sleight of your hand; without position; without a
home; all unguarded but by your own self-respect. That you follow an
honourable calling, I do not for