Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/102

Rh while in truth they bound me with the fetters of a slave."

He did not speak, but looked at her, with his lips breathless, with his eyes passionate as fire, through the mist that dimmed them as he heard. Hearing no more than this, her life seemed known in its every hour to him; he understood her more nearly, more deeply, than any man had ever done; more truly far than those whose genins and whose aspiratíons had far more closely been akin with hers.

She looked at him and sighed.

"Wait. Do not think me blameless because in the outset I was wronged. I tell you that I have great sins at my score. True, at the time I speak of now, I was sinned against, not sinning. I was led to ally myself in earliest youth with those whom later years have shown me were desperate, insatiate unscrupulous, guilt-stained gamesters, who staked a nation's peace to win a gambler's throw, and played at patriotism as keenly and as greedily as men play for gold. I was dazzled, intoxicated, beguiled, misled at once by all that was best and all that was worst in me; and, too late, I found the truth, found every avenue of retreat closed, found myself bound beyond escape, found that"

She paused abruptly, shutting in the words, but