He was still holding my arm, and I let him hold it:  the man was hardly himself under the slavery of his passion.  But again, at my words, the wonder which I had seen before stole into his eyes.

“You must know where she is,” he said, with a straining look at my face, “but—­but—­”

He broke off, leaving his sentence unfinished.  Then he broke out again: 

“Safe from me?  I would make life a heaven for her!”

“That’s the old plea,” said I.

“Is a thing a lie because it’s old?  There’s nothing in the world I would not give her—­nothing I have not offered her.”  Then he looked at me, repeating again:  “You must know where she is.”  And then he whispered:  “Why aren’t you with her?”

“I have no wish to be with her,” said I. Any other reason would not have appealed to him.

He sank down on the stool again and sat in a heap, breathing heavily and quickly.  He was wonderfully transfigured, and I hardly knew in him the cold harsh man who had been my temporary master and was the mocking husband of the duchess.  Say all that may be said about his passion, I could not doubt that it was life and death to him.  Justification he had none; excuse I found in my heart for him, for it struck me—­coming over me in a strange sudden revelation as I sat and looked at him—­that he had given such love to the duchess, the gay little lady would have been marvelously embarrassed.  It was hers to dwell in a radiant mid-ether, neither to mount to heaver nor descend to hell.  An din one of theses two must dwell such feelings as the dukes’s.

He roused himself, and leaning forward spoke to me again: 

“You’ve lived in the same house with her and talked to her.  You swear you don’t love her?  What?  Has Elsa’s little figure come between?”

His tone was full of scorn.  He seemed angry with me, not for presuming to love his wife (nay, he would not believe that), but for being so blind as not to love Marie.

“I didn’t love her!” I answered, with a frown on my face and slow words.

“You have never felt attracted to her?”

I did not answer that question.  I sat frowning in silence till the duke spoke again, in a low hoarse whisper: 

“And she?  What says she to you?”

I looked up with a start, and met his searching wrathful gaze.  I shook my head; his question was new to me—­new and disturbing.

“I don’t know,” said I; and on that we sat in silence for many moments.

Then he rose abruptly and stood beside me.

“Mr. Aycon,” he said, in the smoother tones in which he had begun our curious interview, “I came near a little while ago to doing a ruffianly thing, of a sort I am not wont to do.  We must fight out our quarrel in the proper way.  Have you any friends in the neighborhood?”

“I am quite unknown,” I answered.

He thought for an instant, and then continued: