Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida'.djvu/201

Rh A woman rose from her couch in the distance, startled, yet with the look of one who disdains to give its reins to fear—as a sovereign would rise were her solitude desecrated;—and he paused, his steps arrested and his passions silenced, as in ancient days he who came to slay in the deadliness of wrath, uncovered his head, and dropped his unsheathed sword, entering the holy shrine at whose altar his foe had taken sanctuary. His enemy was forgotten;—he stood before Idalia.

He saw her in the flood of amber light that fell upon the lustre of her hair, on the white folds of her dress with its hem of gold, on the scarlet blossom of the roses clustering about her feet, on the aromatic mist of the aloe wood burning near;—and in an instant he had crossed the marble that severed them, his head uncovered, his hand disarmed, his eyes blinded.

"At last!—at last!" And he had never known how strong had become the power, how eager had grown his quest, of the memory which had pursued him, until now, when he bowed before her, when his lips were on her hand, when a hot joy that he had never known swept through his life, when in that sudden meeting his gaze looked upward to the face which