Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/113

102 that proves fratrícide only a droit d'aineese, and logic that demonstrates a lie the natural right of man!"

He answered her nothing. She saw a look come on his face mortified, wounded, incredulous. There was something in her words, and in the accent of their utterance, that seemed to chill him to the bone, and freeze his very heart. The stately simplicity of his own character could not follow the manifold phases of hers. Moreover, he had spoken in the fervour of passion: she had answered him with what, if it were not half scorn, half cruelty, trenched close on both. A certain pitying light glowed in her eyes as they read this, the languid and ironic smile passed from her lips, she sighed slightly, though it was half with a laugh that she spoke:

"Caro es, non Angelus.

Do you not remember the old Latin line? Be sure that you may say it to any human life you meet; above all, to a woman's! There is no angel amongst us; some faint rays of purer light here and there; that is the uttermost, and that so often darkened! I will give you the surest guard against the calamity of disappointment. Learn to say, and