Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/342

Rh "Then, if we are outnumbered, keep the last shot for me, and take sure aim."

A mortal anguish quivered through him; he knew it might well prove that this boon, and this only, would be all that he could do to rescue or obey her.

"The last but one," he answered. "The last shall bring me to you."

The words were brief, and had the noble simplicity of his own nature in them; blent with a high devotion that held her honour dearer yet than all her beauty, and would obey her will even unto this last night of all. He had loved her ere now as dogs love, as slaves love, as men love whose passions can make them madmen, dotards, fools; but with that hour he loved her more grandly, more deeply, with a passion that sank into her heart, and stirred it as the storm winds stir the sea; that, for the first time in all the years in which this insanity had been roused by her and lavished on her, moved her to reverence what she ruled, to feel the strength, the depth, the force of this life that she, and she alone, could break as a child breaks reeds. She was silent; she let herself be borne by him through the twilight; she, too, felt a lulling sweetness, a subtle charm, in that breathless passage through the