feelings? Yet you, with a woman's instinct, will have already caught
the clue to it. It needs no mirror to assure me that the clue is here
for you, in my eyes. It needs no dictionary of quotations to remind me
that the eyes are the windows of the soul. And I know that from two
open windows my soul has been leaning and signalling to you, in a code
far more definitive and swifter than words of mine, that I love you."

Zuleika, listening to him, had grown gradually paler and paler. She
had raised her hands and cowered as though he were about to strike
her. And then, as he pronounced the last three words, she had clasped
her hands to her face and with a wild sob darted away from him. She
was leaning now against the window, her head bowed and her shoulders
quivering.

The Duke came softly behind her. "Why should you cry? Why should you
turn away from me? Did I frighten you with the suddenness of my words?
I am not versed in the tricks of wooing. I should have been more
patient. But I love you so much that I could hardly have waited. A
secret hope that you loved me too emboldened me, compelled me. You DO
love me. I know it. And, knowing it, I do but ask you to give yourself
to me, to be my wife. Why should you cry? Why should you shrink from
me? Dear, if there were anything . . . any secret . . . if you had
ever loved and been deceived, do you think I should honour you the
less deeply, should not cherish you the more tenderly? Enough for me,
that you are mine. Do you think I should ever reproach you for
anything that may have--"

Zuleika turned on him. "How dare you?" she gasped. "How dare you speak
to me like that?"