Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/164

Rh glittering masquerade» a sceptre with which to sway a court of madmen, a weapon with which to reap the harvests of gold and power, a passion that men got drunk with as with raki, and through which, as they pampered or inflamed it, women could indirectly rule the world. Her contempt for it had been as great as the sovereignty with which she had used it.

It was bitter to her to think that she could have so much weakness in her—so much living still beneath all that she had seen, known, done, to slay it by the roots. Something of the warmth of passion, something of its tenderness, were on her; and she flung them away, she would not have them. The unquestioning fealty which was ready to do her will at all and any cost, the devotion to her which, without any recompense, any hope, any self-interest, accepted the peril from which she had offered to free him, and with a simple grandeur claimed the right to be true to his word: these moved her as nothing else could have done. Tempests had swept over her, leaving her utterly unswayed by them; the rarity which touched her as something strange and unfamiliar was the unselfishness of the love he bore her. Many had loved her as well; none so generously.