Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida'.djvu/266

258 "Oh, Sulla! when one life is chosen, is there no escape into another? If we accept error in blindness once, is there no laying it down? Plutarch has written, 'When we see the dishonour of a thing, then is it time to renounce it.' But what can we if we cannot—if it stay with us, and will not forsake us? How can I be free from it?" But bondage was not submission; and she was like the Palmyran or Icenian queens—made a slave, but all a sovereign atill.

A humming-bird flew against her, and, frightened, tangled itself among her lace. She put her hand over it, and caught it, stroked smooth the little ruffled wings, laid her lips gently on its bright head, and, opening one of the lattices, loosed it, and let it fly into the sunny air.

"Liberty! Liberty! It is worth any sacrifice," she said, half aloud, as she watched the bird's flight through the gardens and outward to the sea.

At that moment a Nubian slave threw open the broad double doors of jasper at the end of the chamber, the hangings before it were flung aside, and Erceldoune entered her presence.

She had said it would be best that he should remain absent; yet he was not in error when he thought that the smile she had given him last night