Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/228

Rh, a longing to dare, to defy, to vanquish, while she was here a captive, a fearful knowledge, a passionate regret for all that she had lost, for all she might have been, made the slow moments torturing passage unendurable—made her hands clench, her eyes flash, her whole frame quiver and rebel in mighty longing, in fearful bitterness.

She knew that she had in her what would have found power to rule an empire—and she was here the prisoner of a Priesthood!

But a more intense and a more poignant pang than that of her own adversity, of her own peril, was in her for other lives lost through her—for the manhood that had reeled and fallen at her feet, for the sightless eyes that had looked up to hers, for the dead, slaughtered through a too true adherence to her will, a too obedient rendering of her word. True, the liberty for which they had conspired was the just heritage of man, and the noblest cause for which human life can ever be laid down; true, it was for their country, and that country's welfare and freedom, that they had fallen; but this was no opiate to still the remorse that pierced and pursued her. She knew that the cause had been far less to those who had died before her than the smile of her own eyes; she