Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida'.djvu/184

176 false flowers, false laces, false beauty of the Rigolbochade!—it gave Erceldoune a bitter revulsion. True there might be nothing in it to do so; she might go thither, not to the lawless whirl of the stage, but simply to the boxes as a spectator of the scene below; he knew this was common enough with the proudest and purest of women. Still, it revolted him; his memory of her» his belief in her, was as of a life as unlike, and as above the world, as the stars that shone now across the sea above the classic shores where old Olympus rose. It wad an instinct, an impulse, a folly, never analysed, only felt; but to think of her in the gas and throngs of the masked midnight gathering, had given him much each a shock as an artist, soul-devoted to his art, would feel if he could come suddenly on a Raphael or Correggio Madonna made the sign and centre of a riotous casino, or flung by a drunken soldier as worthless loot into the flames of a bivouac fire. This woman, all unknown though she was, had become the single poetic faith, the single haunting weakness of a passionate and earnest temperament, of a changeful and self-sustained life; to have seen her at the Bal de l'Opéra grated jarringly on both. He thought of it now—and the thought was full