“And what am I to tell you about myself? Only that I have a great deal of admiration and very little love! Perhaps you will think that is all I ought to expect, being myself! But really I don’t believe anyone has ever loved me!”
“It would indeed, be strange if they hadn’t,” he replies, unable to remove his gaze from her. “You are deceiving yourself or deceiving me. You are not one to be seen and not loved—madly loved! No matter the dire results of it!” he cries eagerly, and her lids droop under the infinite passion of his eyes.
“It is very hard to tell the real from the sham in love, and in everything else I don’t take the trouble to try; I class them all together, and value them at just as much as they are worth,” she says with a low laugh. “You asked me which of them I liked best—no one; but somehow, though I only saw you two nights ago, you seem to stand apart from the rest, you are different to me! You won’t be ashamed to come here now and then? I am not a grande duchesse, but still——”
“I’ll come till you tire of me. I am afraid that will be too soon. You women are so capricious, especially lovely ones.”
“To everyone else, perhaps, but never to you!” she almost whispers, looking right into his eyes now with a yearning, wistful look that might make him lose his head, and he feels already that the best thing he can do is not to see Mademoiselle Ange again.
But what man has the strength of mind to resist a sudden and violent passion like this? He thinks, as he gazes infatuated on her, of some splendidly plumaged bird, of a mirage in the desert, of heavily scented exotics, of burning skies, or rather he feels all this, for her prerogative is to inspire sensation. To look at her is a species of moral dram drinking, and she stands in comparison to better, purer women, women like Zai, as brandy stands to weak wine and water.
“If Rubens had seen this girl,” Delaval says to himself, “he would not have sent down for all time a burlesque upon this splendid red and white, this fleshly magnificence!”
“Do you know I had an instinct when I saw you the other night? I believed you were my fate,” she says in a dreamy voice, but so suddenly that he starts a little.
It is startling to think that he should in any way be connected with the fate of this exquisite woman.
As she sits here before him, her hands clasped loosely together, a sort of abandon in her lovely figure, the light throws up richer gold on her hair, the soft folds of her satin gown fall round her moulded form like the robes of an empress, and he almost groans as he realises how impossible it would be to choose a life for one gifted with such rare physical beauty, that would not be hedged round with ten thousand dangers.