Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/131

120 an impatient sigh, as though to take relief from its balmy freshness and cool serenity amidst the glittering martyrdom of the scene before him and the tumult of passion at work in him.

In the intensity of his pain he could have believed himself like the men in the old legends whom a sorceress bewitched; it was anguish alike to stay or to go; every moment he spent there was suffering as intense as when he had lain prostrate with the vultures wheeling above his eyes in the sickly light of the sun, yet he could not tear himself from its terrible fascination any more than he could then have torn himself from the power of the carrion birds. He believed in her; yes, not less utterly than when a few hours before he had heard her lofty and spiritualised thoughts unfold all diviner things, and lead him through the dim and glorious mysteries of a poet's speculations of eternal worlds. But he felt like a man in delirium tremens, who struggles with a thousand hideous and revolting shapes, that rise again as fast as he overthrows them. The atmosphere about her, the glances that dwelt on her, the profane mocking wit that woke her laughter, the eyes that met her own in such bold language, the gaming-passion that, while it possessed at least enslaved her, all these were so much desecration and