Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/41

30 or ambition shattered, was the sense that love her as he had, love her as he would, consume his very heart for her sake as he might, he would never—plead, beseech, swear, or prove it as he should—make her believe that one pulse of love beat in him. And all the bygone ironies and contemptuous scoffs which he had used to cast on those who suffered for the lost smile of a woman's eyes came back upon him now, laughing in his ear and jibing at his weakness like fantastic devils mocking at his fall. A woman had enthralled him; and his philosophics were dead—corpses that lay cold and powerless before him, incapable of rallying to his rescue, things of clay without a shadow's value.