Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/105

94 would. In that I have been loyal to the core, but in all else I have been very guilty. I have tempted, blinded, seduced men into the love that gave them as wax into my hands. I have roused their darkest passions, that of those passions I might make the firebrands or the swords my purpose needed. I have taken their peace and crushed it to powder; I have taken their hearts and broken them without a pause of pity; I have sent them out to the slaughter careless how they fell, so that my will was done; I have sent them out to perish, far and wide, north and south, east and west, and never asked the cost of all that gold of human life wherewith I pláayed my pitiless gambling. I smiled at those for whom I cared no more than for the stones of that torrent; I let them hope I loved them, so long as that hope was needed to make them ready instruments to my using: I was stirred no more by despair than I was for compassion. So long as I had my slaves, I heeded nothing what they suffered, how they were captured. I only smiled át the fools who thought women had no share in the making of history, no power to penetrate the arcana of life That was all."

He listened, and a heavy sigh answered her as she paused; it was involuntary, unconscious. He had