"Your place was the stage, Madam!" he said--"You should have been the chief female mime at some 'high-class' theatre! You would have adorned the boards, drawn the mob, had as many lovers, stagey and private as you pleased, been invited to act at Windsor, obtained a payment-jewel from the Queen, and written your name in her autograph album. That should undoubtedly have been your 'great' career--you were born for it--made for it! You would have been as brute-souled as you are now,--but that would not have mattered,--mimes are exempt from chastity!" In the action of breaking the dagger, and in the intense bitterness of his speech he had thrust her back a few paces from him, and she stood breathless and white with rage, eyeing him in mingled passion and terror. For a moment she was silent,--then advancing slowly with the feline suppleness of movement which had given her a reputation for grace exceeding that of any woman in England, she said in deliberately measured accents-- "Lucio Rimânez, I have borne your insults as I would bear my death at your hands, because I love you. You loathe me, you say--you repulse me,--I love you still! You cannot cast me off--I am yours! You shall love me, or I will die,--one of the two. Take time for thought,--I leave you to-night,--I give you all to-morrow to consider,--love me,--give me yourself,--be my lover,--and I will play the comedy of social life as well as any other woman,--so well that my husband shall never know. But refuse me again as you have refused me now, and I will make away with myself. I am not 'acting,'--I am speaking calmly and with conviction; I mean what I say!" "Do you?" queried Lucio coldly--"Let me congratulate you! Few women attain to such coherence!" "I will put an end to this life of mine;" she went on, paying no sort of heed to his words--"I cannot endure existence without your love, Lucio!" and a dreary pathos vibrated in her voice--"I hunger for the kisses of your lips,--the clasp of your arms! Do you know--do you ever think of your own power?--the cruel, terrible power of your eyes, your speech, your smile,--the beauty which makes you more like an angel than a man,--and have you no pity? Do you think that ever a man was born like you?" he looked at her as she said this, and a faint smile rested on his lips--"When you speak, I hear music--when you sing, it seems to me that I understand what the melodies of a poet's heaven must be;--surely, surely you know that your very looks are a snare to the warm weak soul of a woman! Lucio!--" and emboldened by his silence, she stole nearer to him--"Meet me to-morrow in the lane near the cottage of Mavis Clare...." He started as if he had been stung--but not a word escaped him.