Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/111

100 squandered wealth and the fallen power that once would have been his by right; his to lay at her feet, his to make his fortunes equal with his name.

"You love liberty?" she said, suddenly, almost abruptly, save that all in her was too exquisitely harmonised, too full of languor and repose ever to become abrupt. "Tell me, would you not think any sin justified to obtain it?" "Justified?"

"Yes, justified!" she said, impatiently, while her eyes flashed on him under their drooped lids. "What! do you know the world so well, and yet do not know that there have been crimes before now glorious as the morning, and virtues base as the selfish chillness that they sprang from? What was Corday's crime—what was Robespierre's virtue? Answer me. Would you think it justified, or not?" A flush rose over his face; he thought, he felt, that it was of her own liberty she spoke. "Do not ask me!" he said, hurriedly. "You would make me a sophist in your cause. Evil is never justified, though done that good may come; but to serve you, to succour you, I fear that I should scorn no sin, nor turn from any!"