Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/237

226 muttered in his throat, as he turned and paced the cell a moment, to still the feverish, angered, impatient bitterness rising in him and unnerving him. He felt to her as in the days of the Middle Age men felt to those women whom they sent to the stake for the dangerous sorcery, the white magic, of their too great charms.

She waited there, serene, unmoved, her eyes looking outward at the desolate and barren marshes, her hair slightly pushed back from her brows, the richness and the glitter of her masque dress the sole point of colour in the grey gloom of the cell. She looked like a picture burnt in on the darkness of the naked prison wall.

His glance, licentious and ruthless under the velvet gentleness of his long-studied regard, devoured her loveliness with thirsty, astonished admiration. He had said of her that she had the daring of the Cæsars, but he thought now that she had the intoxication of a Cleopatra. He had heard of her power, he had heard of her witchery, he had heard of the insanity of men who loved her and thought a world well lost for her; he felt and understood the meaning of those stories now. And a proud, eager, cruel light dawned on his face. "Altro!" he murmured to himself, with the mocking smile of his full