Delafield bent over her and took both her hands forcibly in his own.
"If all that were true, I would rather risk it a thousand times over than go out of your life again--a stranger. Julie, you have done mad things for love--you should know what love is. Look in my face--there--your eyes in mine! Give way! The dead ask it of you--and it is God's will."
And as, drawn by the last, low-spoken words, Julie looked up into his face, she felt herself enveloped by a mystical and passionate tenderness that paralyzed her resistance. A force, superhuman, laid its grasp upon her will. With a burst of tears, half in despair, half in revolt, she submitted.
XXII
In the first week of May, Julie Le Breton married Jacob Delafield in the English Church at Florence. The Duchess was there. So was the Duke--a sulky and ill-resigned spectator of something which he believed to be the peculiar and mischievous achievement of his wife.
At the church door Julie and Delafield left for Camaldoli.
"Well, if you imagine that I intend to congratulate you or anybody else upon that performance you are very much mistaken," said the Duke, as he and his wife drove back to the "Grand Bretagne" together.
"I don't deny it's--risky," said the Duchess, her hands on her lap, her eyes dreamily following the streets.
"Risky!" repeated the Duke, shrugging his shoulders. "Well, I don't want to speak harshly of your friends, Evelyn, but Miss Le Breton--"