Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida'.djvu/275

Rh along the Bosphorus shore, and left her only when the midnight stars rose over the minarets of the city of Constantine. He met no one in her Turkish villa, and she let him come in this familiar unbroken intercourse as though it were welcome to her; as though, indeed, their friendship had been the long-accustomed growth of years. He asked nothing, heeded nothing; he never paused to recall that there was any defiance of custom in the intercourse between them, or to note that she, with her wealth and her splendour, was as utterly alone as though she were a recluse of Mount AthoB ; he never observed that she kept silence on all that could have explained her presence in Moldavia, or given him account of the position and the character of her life; he never noticed, he never recollected;—he was lost in a day-dream of such magic that it lulled him to oblivion of everything save itself, and all criticism, all reason, all doubt, were as impossible in him as insult and outrage to her. His own nature was one too boldly free, too accustomed to the liberty of both action and thought, too little tolerant of the ceremonials and conventionalities of the world, to be awake to the singularity of her reception of him as others might have been. Moreover, while she allowed him this unrestrained communion with her,