Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/225

214 her to endure. He had given her to bondage—yes, but he had given her also to Giulio Villaflor!

There are women who rouse a passion far more intense than can be held in the word love, which makes the man who feels it lose all semblance of himself, which sweeps away his memory, his honour, his reason, his ambitions, his very nature. And leaves him no sense of anything save itself. This was the passion which made her traitor now—cold, and keen, and subtle, and world-worn, and sceptical as he had been—choke down the great sobs in his throat, as he thought:

"Only to know her dead, so that no other can ever look on her; only to know that! Dead, dead, dead! she would seem mine then. And yet—I should rifle her grave like the madman in legends, for one sight of her face, for one touch of her lips!"