But when they boarded the P & O Liner at Marseilles, Ilina knew that every man on the ship looked at her and looked again in admiration and it gave her a confidence in herself that she had never had before.
What was so perfect was to be alone with the Duke and for him to make love to her until she was no longer the worried insignificant girl that she had been, but the radiant Goddess that he believed her to be.
“I have sought for you all my life,” he sighed, “in pictures and sculpture, in music and on the snow-coated peaks of the Himalayas, but I was quite sure that you did not exist except in my imagination.”
“Supposing I – disappoint – you?”
“You will never do so, my lovely one. Every time I look at you and every time I touch you I grow more and more in love. I know as surely as if t
