Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/338

Rh longs to disobey, and serve him, and revenge him, with the death-gripe.

He took his heel off the neck of Giulio Villaflor.

"As you will."

His voice shook over the simple words; his face flushed hotly to the very temples as, for the first time, he met her gaze; his eyes searched hers, thirstily wistful, wildly eager. "Come, for the love of God! You trust me?"

"As I never trusted any."

She stretched out to him, as she spoke, her fettered hands that, even chained, had found strength in them to hold the slender blade that would have sheathed itself in her heart or her tyrant's. There was that in the action which, even in such a moment, made him feel faint and blind with hope. It repaid him all—would have repaid him his death-stroke, had he laid dying at her feet.

For all answer he crushed the steel links that hung, holding her wrists powerless, in the grasp which had stifled Giulio Villaflor, and bent and wrenched and twisted them with the same force as that by which he had once torn off an Indian boar from its writhing human prey; the chain broke and fell asunder.

His eyes, as they looked up to hers, spoke a