Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/78

Rh Yet for one moment more the love he had borne her vanquished him again, and he remembered nothing but its pain, its wrong, and its rejection; for one moment more he gave himself up to the misery, the weakness, the shame, as he held it, of this fool's idolatry;—it was the one thing alone, loathingly as he contemned it, that could have made him a better and a truer man.

His head dropped till it sank down on to his arms, that were folded on the marble ledge, and a sharp quiver like a woman's weeping shook him from head to foot.

"I would have forgiven her all—even her scorn," he thought, "if only she would have believed that I loved her!"