"Yes! I should not have told you, should never have confessed it, even to myself, but for—what you said. It is the truth. I loved her! What!" and he leant forward, his thin, wasted face flushed, his lips trembling. "Do you think that it is given to you only to appreciate such beauty and grace and sweetness as Leslie Lisle's? You remind me that I am crooked, twisted, deformed——."
"Dolph!"
"But do you think, because I am what I am outwardly, that I have no heart? God, who sees below the surface, knows that there beats in my bosom a heart as tender, as hungry for love, as quick to love as yours! Ah, and quicker, hungrier! And I loved her! Loved her with a love as strong and passionate as yours!" He stopped for want of breath.
Yorke sank into a chair and turned his face away.
"And you did not guess it? Well, that is not surprising, for I strove hard to hide it from even myself. I knew that it was madness to hope that I might win her love! But I knew that if I had offered myself in my right colors she would have accepted me, bent, twisted, deformed, mockery of a man as I am!"
Yorke groaned.
"And—and—" he stopped, and seemed to be struggling with something—"and I was tempted! Yes, I was tempted the morning she came to me and told me that she knew, was tempted to tell her that she might still be a duchess, that I loved her and would marry her!"
Yorke sprang to his feet.
"Sit—sit down," said the duke hoarsely, and Yorke sank down again. "But I resisted the temptation. I left her without a word, without a look or sign by which she could know the truth. I had to bear it. It is a burden which crushes, which tortures me! Even since I left the cursed place the temptation has assailed me at intervals, and once or twice I have almost resolved to write—to go down to her—and offer her that upon which she has set her woman's heart—the ducal coronet—for which even a Leslie Lisle will sell herself!"
Yorke opened his lips, but the duke by a gesture stopped him again.