Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida'.djvu/86

78 ever, and that when those stars rose on another night, and shed their brightness upon earth and ocean, forest and sea, his eyes would be blind to their light and behold them no more, since he would be stricken out from the world of the living.

At last,—it seemed that an eternity had come and gone,—the day reached him, dawning from the splendour of Asia far away.

The light streamed in the east, the darkness of the shadows was broken by the first rays of warmth, the night birds fled to their roost, and above the clouds rose the sun, bathing the sleeping world in its golden gladness, and shining full on the snow peaks of the mountains. The forest-life awoke; the song of countless birds rose on the silence, the hum of myriad insects murmured beneath the grasses, the waters of innumerable torrents glistened in the sunbeams;—and, alone in the waking and rejoicing world, he lay, dying.

About him, where never sunlight came, were dank grasses, and the gloomy foliage of pines, but above-head, far aloft through the walls of granite, was the blue and cloudless sky of a summer dawn. His eyes looked upward to it heavily, and with the film gathering fast over them; in his physical anguish,