"A woman's heart," he said deeply, "a woman's true tenderness; and it needs all that heart, all its love, all its patience and sacrifice to keep that man--all and forever." He saw her bosom heave; she had thrown her fur off, as if its warmth stifled her. Vivid color had come into her face. Her pallor for the time was destroyed, and as she flashed a rebellious look at him, a look of revolt and selfhood, he seemed to see again the American girl--wilful, egotistical, spoiled--an imperious creature whose caprices had been opposed to the Duke's Anglo-Saxon temperament and national egoism. At this moment, the window the Duchess looked towards opened part way: it was under the eaves and there must have been a dovecote near, for there came the soft sound of cooing like the call of a young bird. Possibly the gentle note reached the woman's hearing as well, for her face transcendently softened. "I think," she said with evident effort to speak in a commonplace tone, "it would be quite futile to urge Cecil to come." "Oh, I shan't advise him so." Bulstrode's quick answer made her look at him in so much surprise that he went on to say: "I would not, in justice to him, in justice to the great love I have been permitted to see, advise him to come." The Duchess, during the months of analysis, suffering and experience, had not admitted to herself that should her husband return she would receive him, nor had she decided as to quite how obdurate she would be, and she was curious at the attitude of this gentle friend. She naïvely asked: "Why would you not advise him so?" Bulstrode said, still continuing his pleasant sententiousness, "The woman's heart must be as stable as the man's is uncertain, and the man who comes back after such a separation must not find a woman who does not know her own mind. He must, on the contrary, find one who has no mind or will or life but his." As he looked at the person to whom he spoke he was somewhat struck by the maternal look in her: he had never clearly discovered it before. Her breast from which the fur had fallen, as it rose and fell under her soft gown, was full, generous, and beautiful; even as he spoke in a certain accusation against her, she seemed to have altered. "Westboro'," he said a little confused, "must come back to a woman, Duchess, to a woman--to a consoler. I wish I could express myself--almost to a mother--as well as to a wife." The ardent color dyed her face again; her lips moved. She put out her hand towards him, and as he took it he understood that she wished him to bid her good-by and to leave her alone. He heard what she struggled to say: "He must not come, he must not come." "No," he accepted sadly for his friend, "No, he must not come."