Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/122

111 ask me now to believe you, when you say 'Non Ángelus!'"

She turned her eyes on him with a sudden weary wistfulness, a sudden ironic scorn intricately commingled: "I do say it. Repeat it till you believe it; it is a terrible truth. Here and there we do a little good;—save, as I saved to that poor Capriote, the life of starving infants, a legacy of grandchildren that her dead son left to drag her into the grave; children as bright as the morning, dying for want of the bread we throw away as we eat guinea peaches and two thousand-franc pine-apples!—what is the worth of it? It is a grain against a mountain — of evil ! "

He looked at her with appealing pain; he felt vaguely that she, who to him was stainless as the morning, had the darkness of some remorse upon her, and yet he could neither follow the veiled intricacies of her nature, nor divest her of that divinity with which to-day yet more than ever he had clothed her. She glanced up at him and laughed.

"Do not look so grave! I never murdered any one in poisoned wines, or medicated roses; it is a good deal to say in these days of artistic slaughter! Believe me—a woman. If you rightly understand all those words say, you will never attribute me too