Zuleika Dobson; Or, An Oxford Love Story

But she would have no ellipses. “What are you going to do?” she whispered. “Do you not know?” “Tell me.” “Once and for all: you cannot love me?” Slowly she shook her head. The black pearl and the pink, quivering, gave stress to her ultimatum. But the violet of her eyes was all but hidden by the dilation of her pupils. “Then,” whispered the Duke, “when I shall have died, deeming life a vain thing without you, will the gods give you tears for me? Miss Dobson, will your soul awaken? When I shall have sunk for ever beneath these waters whose supposed purpose here this afternoon is but that they be ploughed by the blades of these young oarsmen, will there be struck from that flint, your heart, some late and momentary spark of pity for me?” “Why of course, of COURSE!” babbled Zuleika, with clasped hands and dazzling eyes. “But,” she curbed herself, “it is--it would--oh, you mustn’t THINK of it! I couldn’t allow it! I--I should never forgive myself!” “In fact, you would mourn me always?” “Why yes!.. Y-es-always.” What else could she say? But would his answer be that he dared not condemn her to lifelong torment? “Then,” his answer was, “my joy in dying for you is made perfect.” Her muscles relaxed. Her breath escaped between her teeth. “You are utterly resolved?” she asked. “Are you?” “Utterly.” “Nothing I might say could change your purpose?” “Nothing.” “No entreaty, howsoever piteous, could move you?” “None.” Forthwith she urged, entreated, cajoled, commanded, with infinite prettiness of ingenuity and of eloquence. Never was such a cascade of dissuasion as hers. She only didn’t say she could love him. She never hinted that. Indeed, throughout her pleading rang this recurrent motif: that he must live to take to himself as mate some good, serious, clever woman who would be a not unworthy mother of his children.