Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida'.djvu/277

Rh and warmed with the picturesque hue of an imagination naturally luxuriant, though the world had joined with it an ironic and contemptuous scepticism that gave the keenness of wit, side by side with the colour of a poet, to her thoughts and to her words; she understood men pitilessly, human nature unerringly, none could have palmed off on her a false mask or a glossed action; she had seen and known the world in all its intricacies; the variety of her acquirements was scarcely so singular as the variety of her experience; and the swift change of her mood, now grave to melancholy, now careless to caprice, now thoughtful with a profound and philosophic insight into the labyrinths of human life, now gay with the nonchalant and glittering gaiety of bohemian levity, gave her much of inconstancy, it is true, but gave her infinitely more of charm and enchantment.

Evening fell once more, closing in the eighth day that their intercourse had thus passed on since the night when he had found her as he had hunted the Greek to his death; they had lingered without moving in the banqueting-room; the wines, and flowers, and fruits still standing on the table; no light stronger than the clear vivid moonlight shining on the freshly-cut flowers that strewed the ground,