He drew nearer still to her, so near that as he bent toward her his knee touched the ground and his arm instinctively stretched out behind her, so that at the least movement on her part it would close around her and hold her--as indeed he longed that it should do. She was so very beautiful, and that air of settled melancholy, of childlike helplessness and pathos in her made an irresistible appeal to him. "Madonna," he whispered, "an you would let me, I should like to make love to you now." But she, with a quick, impatient jerk suddenly sat bolt upright and freed herself almost roughly from that arm which was nearly encircling her shoulders. "Love!" she said with cold sarcasm. "You?" He bit his lip and in his turn drew back: the dour look in his face became more marked and the merry twinkle died out of his eyes: his knee no longer touched the ground, but he remained quite self-possessed and said, still quite good-humouredly: "Yes, I--your husband as it happens, Madonna. Would love from me be so very distasteful to you then?" "I have no love for you, Messire, as you well know," she said coldly. "I told you what my feelings were toward yon, the first time that we met--at the Town House, the night of our betrothal." "Yes," he owned, "you spoke very plainly then." "And since then I have had no cause to change." "I am as distasteful to you as I ever was?" he asked with droll consternation. "Oh!--not distasteful, Messire." "Come! that’s something." "Enough, methinks." "Not by a long way, but it is a beginning. To-day I am not altogether distasteful--to-morrow I might e’en be tolerated ... in a week toleration might turn to liking ... and after that, liking to..." "Never," she broke in firmly, "I should have to forget that which is indelibly writ upon my memory." "And what is that?" "That you married me without love and without wooing--bought me like a bundle of goods just because my father is powerful and yours ambitious. A week ago we were betrothed, Messire. Since then how hath your time been passed?" "In wild, ecstatic half-hours spent in the presence of your duenna and sitting opposite to the chilliest bride in Christendom," he said whimsically. "And the rest of the time in the taverns of Ghent," she retorted hotly, "and places of ill-repute." "Who told you that?" he asked quietly. "Oh! your reputation is well known: how could it fail to reach mine ears." "Evil tongues always make themselves heard, Madonna," he said, still speaking very quietly, although now he sat quite apart from her, with his long legs stretched out before him and his hands clasped between his knees. "I would you had not listened." "I would I had not heard," she assented, "for then I should not have added one more humiliation to all those which I have had to endure."