Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/109

98 What have I that those had not? I have nothing on earth whereby to be worthy of you—whereby to have won you?"

Hís life was so sweet with its rapture, his passion was so blind with its victory, he scarce remembered those who had so vainly suffered before him. Every happiness is selfish, more or less; and his was so in that moment. She half smiled, and let her head droop over him, till her lips touched his again:

"Who can answer for love? Others have done as much for me as you—others have loved me, even as well as you; but" "None had yours?" He asked it eagerly, breathlessly, still; this was all that he doubted in her past—that some other life had reigned before him in that heart which beat so near to his.

"No! A thousand times 'No!' if you care for the denial. Love was my tool, he was never my master."

She spoke with her oíd imperial dignity of disdain for those follies of feeling and of the senses which sway mankind so widely and so idly. Then the scorn faded from her eyes, a weariness stole there instead; her voice sank, and lost its pride in the