“Gabrielle!” he repeats, with a complacent smile. Why! Zai is jealous after all! “Is it possible that you think of her and of me in the same breath? You might accredit me with better taste, I think. Come, Zai! will you let me try and convince you of the sincerity of my love for you?” he says softly.
“No! No!” she cries hastily, thinking it is base treason to Carl, even to listen to all this. “No! it would be useless, a waste of time on your part, since I tell you frankly that I could never love you.”
“A good many women say that, and yet learn the lesson of love at last, learn it too well, to their cost,” he remarks with supreme conceit.
“It may be so, very likely it is, in fact,” she replies as she scans his face, and, in spite of Carl, is fain forced to confess to herself that to women who love physical attraction, this man with his fair languid beauty, his earnest ultramarine eyes, must be irresistible. “But I could never be one of them.”
“Do give me leave to try,” he whispers in a voice that is wonderfully seductive. “You shall be as free as a bird, only I—I shall be bound—and willingly.”
“No! No!” she says, almost sharply.
It is not that she fears temptation, but the very idea of love from anyone but Carl is odious to her.
“I could never care for you. I could never marry you.”
“Reconsider that, Zai!”
“If I reconsidered it for ever I should never change my mind!”