Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/107

96 said, rather to herself than to him. "Their pride is centred in a silver hair-pin; their conscience is committed to a priest; their credulity is contented with tradition; their days are all the same, from the rising of one sun to another; they do not love, they do not hate; they are like the ass that they drive, follow one patient routine, and only take care for their food;—perhaps they are to be envied!" He rose, too, and came beside her.

"Do not belie yourself! You would be the last to say so. You would not lose 'those thoughts that wander through eternity,' to gain in exchange the peace from ignorance of the peasant or the dullard?"

She turned her face to him, with its most beautiful smile on her lips and in her eyes.

"No, I would not: you are right. Better to know the secrets of the gods, even though with pain, than to lead the dull, brute life, though painless. It is only in our dark hours that we would sell our souls for a dreamless ease."

"Dark hours! You should not know them. Ah, if you would but trust me with some confidence—if there were but some way in which I could serve you"