Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/278

Rh oftentimes lavished on her, yet never had it moved her as it moved her now. She had told him that no other thing save misery could come to him through her; she had forbidden him even the baseless solace of hope; she had bade him fear, scorn, hate, flee from her; and nothing had killed his loyalty, nothing had burnt out his passion. A glow of warmth passed over her; an infinite tenderness made the tears gather in her eyes as she saw this faith against all trial borne to her, this chivalry through every ordeal staunch to her.

"If a straight stroke and a lion heart could deliver me, how soon I should be free!" she thought. "He comes too late—too late!"

Too late; not alone to unloose her bonds and rend her from her gaolers, but too late to wake her heart to his, to find her life unusurped, to be sufficient for her in the lotus-dream of love.

The step of a monk was heard without as one of the brethren passed to fetch water from a well that was built under the shadow of a few cypress-trees some score yards from the convent. She left the barred casement, signing her lover towards the deep shade where the blackness of overhanging rocks made a refuge into which not even the noon-rays could penetrate.