Does a woman think in these moments of sweet madness? Not she—how should she, with the one voice in her ears, the one face pleading, quivering before her. In that sudden passion she could not speak nor look. Her hands clasped in her lap, she gazed down on them and all her being was to hear. He did not touch her, but leaned from his chair so that he appeared to kneel. Certainly the man’s heart knelt as before a shrine. “What I would know is this— Why did you reject Baltimore? I know no other woman that had done it. Is your heart so hard? Could you not forgive the man? Men err and women should pardon.” She never raised the veil of her lashes, only her hands trembled a little. Was he pleading for the absent? “Since I saw you this question hath torn me. Is your chastity so cold, Diana, that you only cannot pity the flame you inspire? You saw him falsely changed, wounded, repentant, and yet you refused him. Tell me why, I beseech you.” “I pitied him. I would have bound his wound,” she said at last, very low. “Then why—why?” says he urgently. “Pity is near love, they say.” “I cannot love him, your Grace. You counselled me once to marry. I could not. My heart spoke for me and refused.” He considered on that a moment, then continued. “You know what followed. You heard me, and now I ask a question so mad that you’ll do well to kill me with the scorn in those large eyes— But answer first. Could I have said what he said—had I been free and not a fettered slave, would you have dismist me also?” Then, in a quick revulsion—“No, don’t answer, for I have no strength to hear.” He hid his face in his hands, propping them on his knee. So, quivering in every limb, she laid hers on them and drew them gently away until his eyes looked into hers. “Let me answer, my Lord Duke. ’Twill ease my heart that answered for me when you spoke. Had Lord Baltimore been you, I could have loved the very ground he stood on—but refused.” “And why?” Their hands were claspt now each in each, their pulses beat one measure. “Why? because if a woman loves her lover she will not ruin him, and I am what all the world knows me, and you a great Prince.” “Had I been free,” he said in a hot whisper, “and you had said that folly I had crushed your sweetness in my arms till you had no strength to speak, to whisper, but only to love.” He made as though he would have done it, then dropt her hands. “But I am not free,” he said with an infinite melancholy. “You do well to be silent.” “I love you—I love you,” she cried. “Is that to be silent? When you spoke this before that man I was like to have died for joy and sorrow. O heart of my heart, you suffer and I with you.” She threw her head back with closed eyes, the tears slipping from beneath the long lashes,—a pitiful fair face indeed for a lover to see. He knelt now and gathered her in his arms with a tenderness unspeakable.