Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/287

276 hope and his high courage, to give him almost happiness. He could not believe that love like his his would ever be powerless to defend and to release her.

All through the long day he worked unweariedly among the reedy waters, under the frowning shadow of the monastery-crowned rocks. And from her cell she gazed on him—on the bold heroic cast of the head, and the sun-warmed brow from which the waves of hair were dashed; gazed on him where, under the cypress shadows, through the sere rushes, through the sullen waters, he toiled as peasants toil, for her—for her, though she had bidden him forsake even her memory for ever, though she had told him that suffering alone could be his portion through her.

Out of the gloom and silence of her stone-locked cage she gazed down at his labour though the long hot hours of the southern summer days and her eyes were heavy with a regretful languor, her lips parted with a sigh of weariness.

"Too late!" she thought—"Too late!"

The sun sank down, a globe of red flame in an angry sky; the day was done, and with it the day's travail. More had been gathered in it out of the wastes around than the laggard tempers of the