"No," said Lily sharply.
She thought of Nicholas.
"You forget I'm married," she said, with a childish mixture of dignity and simplicity.
The Marchese shrugged his shoulders.
"Not at all. He is very good, very kind, the husband—but so much older! And you were never in love with him—of that I am very certain."
"I thought I was—everyone told me I was——" she began, and added belatedly. "I can't discuss it with you. You must see that. Please don't say any more."
But he said a great deal more, and Lily, with a certain sense of fascination, felt quite unable to help listening to him.
"It was never an Englishman that you needed at all—you do not belong to the Northern races, whatever your birth may be. In temperament you are of the South. You need infinitely more than anyone here will ever give you. To the English, sentiment is ridiculous—poetry is for the inside of the poetry books only—passion is improper—and love means merely the domestic affections. But you—what you need, what you must have, if you are ever to express yourself, fulfil yourself—it is romance."
He spoke with so much simplicity that Lily, answering nothing, merely looked up at him with amazed recognition of the truth in his words. He understood, as Nicholas would never understand, but she knew that she did not want him to make love to her. When the things that he said to her made her heart beat faster she wondered why she was all the time so certain that she did not love him.
He made love openly to her, with a suddenness and a fervour that totally disconcerted her.