As he listens to her he wonders how a music-hall singer has learned the astute wisdom of the world, how words flow to her lips so easily, how, in spite of the surroundings of her daily life, her voice is so sweet and low and soft, her manner so well-bred, her language so refined. “You say I have no heart, no feeling?” she goes on, drawing nearer him and placing her hand upon her breast with a melo-dramatic air, “but what have I to do with such things? Who has ever taught me what love means? Cruelty and insult I have suffered. Once--ah! I nearly died because he whom I adored, trampled on my heart as if it had been dust beneath his feet! But that is past and gone. I forgive him and I do not resent it, but love him still. Love, you know, like one gives to the dead. No! Respect and tenderness to me are just empty sounds. Who in all this world ever cared whether I suffered, whether I lived or--died? _No one!_” Her face glows with emotion, and he, as her wild, reckless words sweep over his ear, feels as if some spell was at work; the room seems to stifle him, and Marguerite’s great black eyes seem to blaze and burn into his brain. “You see I am quite removed from the pale of men’s sympathy. I cannot find any happiness in the way other women find it. I am only a pariah--an outcast.” “You say that you have no chances of happiness like other women have, that there are none who would care to marry you! You will find out your mistake some day, Marguerite. You will find that such a face as yours can win, not only admiration and love, but a husband,” he answers. And he actually believes that, if the Gordian knot was not already tied, there is no knowing what imprudence he might not commit for a creature as rarely lovely as this! “Is that true?” she asks, lifting her head with a strange light in her eyes. “Would men who are far above me--like you, for instance--ever stoop to me?” He half turns away from her. Perhaps his good angel is hovering near, for he comes to the conclusion that it may be best for her and best for himself if this interview comes to an end. She seems to have the power of drawing him nearer and nearer to her every moment. “When you know more of the world,” he says quietly, “_my_ greatness will diminish very greatly in your eyes, if it does not cease altogether. Why, you have raised me aloft, Marguerite, when you don’t even know my name or the class I belong to!” She smiles rather bitterly, and a bright pink surges over her face. “I know who you are--you are Lord Delaval!” she answers in a very low voice, that lingers a little over his name. “Your friends who were with you the other night told me.” “Ah!” he says, “and did they tell you more about me than my name?” he asks eagerly, for somehow he is very averse to her knowing that he is married. “No,” she replies. “Nothing. Wait! They did say that you were not married.” He flushes and is silent a second.