She was in a trance of sheer happiness. At last, she thought, her hope
was fulfilled--that hope which, although she had seldom remembered it
in the joy of her constant triumphs, had been always lurking in her,
lying near to her heart and chafing her, like the shift of sackcloth
which that young brilliant girl, loved and lost of Giacopone di Todi,
wore always in secret submission to her own soul, under the fair soft
robes and the rubies men saw on her. At last, here was the youth who
would not bow down to her; whom, looking up to him, she could adore.
She ate and drank automatically, never taking her gaze from him. She
felt not one touch of pique at his behaviour. She was tremulous with a
joy that was new to her, greater than any joy she had known. Her soul
was as a flower in its opetide. She was in love. Rapt, she studied
every lineament of the pale and perfect face--the brow from which
bronze-coloured hair rose in tiers of burnished ripples; the large
steel-coloured eyes, with their carven lids; the carven nose, and the
plastic lips. She noted how long and slim were his fingers, and how
slender his wrists. She noted the glint cast by the candles upon his
shirt-front. The two large white pearls there seemed to her symbols of
his nature. They were like two moons: cold, remote, radiant. Even when
she gazed at the Duke's face, she was aware of them in her vision.

Nor was the Duke unconscious, as he seemed to be, of her scrutiny.
Though he kept his head averse, he knew that always her eyes were
watching him. Obliquely, he saw them; saw, too, the contour of the
face, and the black pearl and the pink; could not blind himself, try
as he would. And he knew that he was in love.

Like Zuleika herself, this young Duke was in love for the first time.
Wooed though he had been by almost as many maidens as she by youths,