Page:Friendship, by Ouida.djvu/135

 Etoile looked at him and felt a pang at her own heart: half of pity, half of pain. She could not doubt the sincerity of this passionate lament.

'But your friendship' she murmured, and then paused, with the colour in her face.

It was not friendship that thus dragged upon his life. She felt ashamed to speak the sorry lie Society allows and loves.

Ioris, with one of his swift changes of mood, and uneasily conscious that he had betrayed himself too far, turned and laughed carelessly.

'Friendship! Ah! yes. Friendship means anything—everything—from deadliest hate and hottest love downward to the zero of complete indifference! There is only Tsar, I think, who really gives one the honest friendship of a by-gone day.'

He drew the dog to him and caressed him, and sank down on the bench beside her, and talked of Leopardi, whom he had known when he himself had been a little child, and together they watched the pile of the Capitol grow dark and the sun descend behind the purples of the