Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida'.djvu/252

244 odours of wines and flowers, and sx)ices and incense, with the glitter of gold and azure, of silver and scarlet, with light laughter and light wit on the air, he seemed to have lost her again—lost her more cruelly. Even while close beside him, the richness of her beauty the glance of her eyes, the touch of her trailing dress, the gleam of the diamonds on her hair, heightened her loveliness and heightened his passion, till the night seemed full of wild tumult to him, of fierce delight, and of as fiery a pain, there was still on him that deadly nameless sense of some impending loss. She was nothing to him, worse than nothing, if she were not what he believed her. Alas, where was there ever man or woman who reached the spiritualised standard of an idealic love? The lustre and splendour of the chamber, the artistic mingling of colour, the rich wines, the dreamy perfumes, the scented narcotics, these were all, he knew, the studied auxiliaries of a woman whose science was to beguile. But he dashed the accursed suspicion from him as quickly as it rose; he had sworn to believe in her, he would believe in her.

When she at last rose and left the dinner-table, her guests rose too, and followed her. A timepiece was striking twelve when they entered the salon. "We have been long enough at dinner to satisfy