pg1845 [55]
They were in Salt Cellar now. "Melisande!" she called up to her window.
"Hush!" said the Duke, "I have something to say to you."
"Well, you can say it all the better without that great box in your hands. I want my maid to carry it up to my room for me." And again she called out for Melisande, and received no answer. "I suppose she's in the house-keeper's room or somewhere. You had better put the box down inside the door. She can bring it up later."
She pushed open the postern; and the Duke, as he stepped across the threshold, thrilled with a romantic awe. Re-emerging a moment later into the moonlight, he felt that she had been right about the box: it was fatal to self-expression; and he was glad he had not tried to speak on the way from the Front Quad: the soul needs gesture; and the Duke's first gesture now was to seize Zuleika's hands in his.
She was too startled to move. "Zuleika!" he whispered. She was too angry to speak, but with a sudden twist she freed her wrists and darted back.
He laughed. "You are afraid of me. You are afraid to let me kiss you, because you are afraid of loving me. This afternoon—here—I all but kissed you. I mistook you for Death. I was enamoured of Death. I was a fool. That is what YOU are, you incomparable darling: you are a fool. You are afraid of life. I am not. I love life. I am going to live for you, do you hear?"
She stood with her back to the postern. Anger in her eyes had given place to scorn. "You mean," she said, "that you go back on your promise?"
"You will release me from it."
"You mean you are afraid to die?"
"You will not be guilty of my death. You love me."
"Good night, you miserable coward." She stepped back through the postern.
"Don't, Zuleika! Miss Dobson, don't! Pull yourself together! Reflect! I implore you... You will repent..."
Slowly she closed the postern on him.
"You will repent. I shall wait here, under your window..."
He heard a bolt rasped into its socket. He heard the retreat of a light tread on the paven hall.
And he hadn't even kissed her! That was his first thought. He ground his heel in the gravel.
And he had hurt her wrists! This was Zuleika's first thought, as she came into her bedroom. Yes, there were two red marks where he had held her. No man had ever dared to lay hands on her. With a sense of contamination, she proceeded to wash her hands thoroughly with soap and water. From time to time such words as "cad" and "beast" came through her teeth.
She dried her hands and flung herself into a chair, arose and went pacing the room. So this was the end of her great night! What had she done to deserve it? How had he dared?
There was a sound as of rain against the window. She was glad. The night needed cleansing.
He had told her she was afraid of life. Life!—to have herself caressed by HIM; humbly to devote herself to being humbly doted on; to be the slave of a slave; to swim in a private pond of treacle—ugh! If the thought weren't so cloying and degrading, it would be laughable.
For a moment her hands hovered over those two golden and gemmed volumes encasing Bradshaw and the A.B.C. Guide. To leave Oxford by an early train, leave him to drown unthanked, unlooked at... But this could not be done without slighting all those hundreds of other men ... And besides...
Again that sound on the window-pane. This time it startled her. There seemed to be no rain. Could it have been—little bits of gravel? She darted noiselessly to the window, pushed it open, and looked down. She saw the upturned face of the Duke. She stepped back, trembling with fury, staring around