Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/337

326 memory save the sheer animal impulse to slaughter and avenge; and his heel ground down on to Giulio Villaflor's neck, treading out life till the rich lips of the Neapolitan gasped in unconscious torture, and the olive tint of his bold smooth brow grew black as the full veins throbbed and started beneath the skin. One pressure more, and the last pulse of existence would have been crushed out where he lay, with his teeth clenched and his senseless eyes staring upwards:—the touch that could lead him where it would, as a child, fell lightly on her avenger's arm. Idalia's voice thrilled him with its sweet brief words:

"Wait! You are too brave for that. He is fallen; let him lie."

Her gaze dwelt on him, full, humid, eloquent, speaking her gratitude far more deeply than by words. Breathless, victorious, with the war-lust in his eyes, and his heart panting under the bruised muscles and the aching sinews of the chest to which his enemy had been strained in so deadly an embrace, Erceldoune turned and looked at the woman for whose sake he had fought, as a hound, called off from the throat of the thief he has pulled down, looks at the master whom he obeys, even whilst he