Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida'.djvu/202

194 had mocked him a thousand times, from the blue depths of sea waves, in the tawny stretch of eastern plains, in the stillness of starry nights and the darkness of convent aisles, and now at length was found.

She drew herself with haughty amazed anger from him—she saw her solitude violated by the abrupt entrance of an armed man when the night was so late that the chant of the Imaum was calling to prayer: she saw a stranger, by his dress an Arab, bend before her in homage that was insult She wrenched herself away, and signed him back with a gesture too grand in its grace for fear, and in her eyes a glance which spoke without words.

Then, as he raised his head, she saw the features which she had last beheld in what had seemed their death hour, while up to hers gazed the eyes that but for her succour the vulture's beak would have struck, and torn out for ever; then she knew him;—and over her proud loveliness came a sudden flush, a softness that changed it as by a miracle; and she looked down upon him with that glance which he had seen and remembered through the dizzy mists of delirium, and had given to his Madonna in the altar-picture at Monastica. "You!"