She turned away, walking slowly toward the door. He remained rooted to the spot, blushing with shame and dismay.
“Where are you going? To tell him?” he gasped.
She did not reply at once, but drew the portières apart and peered down the stairs beyond, her attitude one of tense anxiety. As she faced him a smile of security was on her lips. She leaned gracefully against the jamb of the door, her arms dropping to her sides.
“Yes, I will forgive you,” she said calmly, and he realised in a flash that the verdict would have been different if there had been the remotest chance that his declaration was overheard. She would have denied him.
“I adore you, Yvonne,” he cried in low tones, striding swiftly toward her, only to halt as he caught the smile of derision in her eyes. “I don't mean it in the way you think. You are so good to me. You have given me so much joy and happiness, and—and you understand me so well. I could die for you, Yvonne. I would die for you. It's not the kind of love you are in the habit of commanding, you who are so glorious and so beautiful. It's the love of a dog for his master.”
She waited an instant, and then came toward him. He never could have explained the unaccountable impulse that forced him to fall back a few steps as she approached. Her eyes were gazing steadily into his, and her red lips were parted.
“That is as it should be,” she was saying, but he was never sure that he heard the words. His knees grew weak. He was in the toils! “Now you must pull yourself together,” she went on, in such a matter-of-fact tone that he straightened up involuntarily. “Come! Wipe the tear-stains from your cheeks.”
He obeyed, but his lip still quivered with the rage that had been checked by the ascendancy of another and even more devastating emotion. She was standing quite close to him now, her slender figure swaying slightly as if moved by some strange, rhythmic melody to which the heart beat time.
Her eyes were soft and velvety again, her smile tender and appealing. The vivid white of her arms and shoulders seemed to shed a soft light about her, so radiant was the sheen of the satin skin. Her gown was of black velvet, cut very low, and with scarcely any ornamentation save the great cluster of rubies at the top of her corsage. They gleamed like coals of fire against the skin, which appeared to absorb and reflect their warmth.
There was a full red rose in her dark hair. She wore no ear-rings, no finger-rings except the narrow gold band on her left hand. A wide, exquisitely designed gold bracelet fitted tightly about her right forearm, as if it had been welded to the soft white flesh. Yvonne's ears were lovely; she knew better than to disfigure them. Her hands were incomparably beautiful; she knew their full value unadorned.