Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/112

Rh every act and word, the bold simplicity of his creeds of honour, her own life looked to her very guilty, very far from the fair light of justicé and of loyalty.

"Leave me," she said to him, briefly, though her voice was very low. "But—do not you reproach me." In answer his arms were stretched to her, and drew her to his breast; in that moment he had command over her, in that moment he was not her slave, but her judge. His face was grave and almost stern, for he suffered keenly, but his voice and his touch were infinitely gentle.

"Leave you? You think I know so little how to value a woman who has the noblest virtue on earth—truth?"

"Truth! when I have told you my whole life was, in one sense, a lie?" "Truth—because you have so told me. Oh, my beloved I know me better than this. Can I not condemn your errors, and yet cherish you but the more because you need some pity and some pardon?" She was silent, deeper smitten than by any rebuke or execration by the unutterable tenderness of this love that was too true to truth to hold her guiltless, yet too true to itself to forsake her