Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/111

100 I never once pitied, when I knew that their hearts were broken. Go—you must think me guilty enough now. Go—for if your trust be dead, rend me out of your life once and for ever at a blow, rather than pass your years with what you doubt."

She put him from her, as she spoke, and rose; her face was very pale, grave with a profound sadness, with a set resolution. The words cost her more than it would have cost her to have thrust the Venetian dagger into her bosom to escape the pursuit of Giulio Villaflor, but they were spoken without a pause to spare herself; she loved him better than herself, and she knew that unless this man's faith were perfect in her, the lives of both would be a hell. And Idalia was too proud a woman either to submit to live suspected, or to allow such faith to be given in error and in ignorance, unmerited. His breath was sharply drawn, as under a keen physical pain; he stood and looked at her with a look that was revenge enough for all the unpitying cruelties of her past; it was so unconsciously a rebuke, so silently and terribly in its pain a condemnation passing words.

For the first time under his gaze her head drooped, her eyes filled with tears of shame, the paleness of her face flushed; before the integral truth of his