Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida'.djvu/268

260 served to veil the thoughts burning beneath his commonest words; they strolled through the cedar aisles, and through the fields of roses, as the heat of the day faded, and the breeze began to stir among the splendours of the flower-wilderness; they passed the sunset hour on the sea, watching the day die out in glory, and the fire from the west glow over the Marmora waves, and tinge the distant snowcrests of Mount Ida and Olympus. When the little caïque floated slowly homeward down the waters, the evening star—the star of Astarte—had risen. Through the opened windows of her villa the lights of the banqueting-room glittered, and the table stood ready served, with the Albanians and Nubians waiting about it. She bade him stay, if he would, and he was her only guest. Had her wines been opium-drugged, they could not have brought him dreams more fatally fair—a lulled delight more sure to wake in bitterness—than they gave him now. The charms for every sense, the beauty of the chamber, the odours of the flowers, the oriental languor pervading the very air—all that he had felt the night before he felt tenfold now: then a passionate jealousy, a restless doubt, had haunted him; now he was alone, and on him only did her smile glance, did her eyes fall.