However, she was not at home. The Duke pleaded. Even so, she was not at home; for, her maid said, she was resting before the ardours of the night journey to Cherbourg, whence she would embark for New York. The Duke scarce awaited the end of the astounding news. Miss Lamb was lying down. Calm and cold, she said:
“What does this mean, Duke? How dare you force yourself on me like this?”
Fair, tall, intent, the Duke further dared her displeasure by raising her unwilling hand to his lips. Twilight filled the room. Outside, the motors raced across the Place Vendôme. The Duke said:
“I have dared everything on this one throw. Ava, I love you.”
Miss Lamb said to her maid, “Go,” and she went.
The Duke smiled unsteadily, saying: “Well? Ava, what have you to say?”
Where she lay on her couch in the dusk, her face was like a pale white flower. But he could not see her eyes, because they were closed. The dress she wore was black. The hand that lay outstretched on her black dress was as soft as a temptation, and he said: “I have a ring for that hand that has not its peer in the world. I love you. Ava, will you marry me?”
He could not see her eyes, because they were closed. But still the dusk lacked the courage to steal the red from her mouth, and the Duke saw that her mouth was parted in a queer sad smile.
“Why do you smile?” he whispered, and he said unsteadily: “I know why. You do not believe I love you, you do not believe I know how to love, you think me the shallow, vain braggart that I have shown to you in the guise of myself until this moment. But I love you, Ava, more than life. I love you, Ava, with all the youthful love I had for your sister increased a thousandfold by the knowledge I now have of myself: for it is by loving that men come to know themselves, and it is by knowing themselves in all humility that men can love with the depths of their hearts. Ava, I do love you terribly! Won’t you speak, won’t you say one word, do you disdain my love so utterly as that? Yet I can’t blame you, for I have spent my life in proving that my love is despicable. I have been proud, pitiless, impious. I am soiled. But, Ava, even a fool may come to know the depths of his folly; and I who know so much of desire, dearly beloved, know that I have never loved until this moment. Still you won’t speak? Ava, I did not think you so ungenerous when in my vanity I first fell under your gentle enchantment. Dear, your silence is destroying all of me but my love. Won’t you give me even so much as a queen will give a beggar, that, had he been another man in another world, he might have kissed her hand?”
Now night had extinguished all but the last tapers of twilight, and in the dark silence the maid whispered to his ear: “Your Grace, she is asleep.”