Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/117

106 I have broken the chains of many captives—men who suffered agonies, here in this Italy, simply because they dared to cling to her, and seek vengeance for her violation. No. It has been no failure. Are we not victorious at the last, if the least thing for freedom have been wrought by us?" She spoke not to him but to her past, as though its remorse arraigned whilst yet its conquest crowned her. She pleaded with her own conscience; she raised her cause in justification against the witness of the years that were gone; she had been true—true to the death—to the peoples of the earth and to their liberties, true to truth through all.

It is a noble loyalty, one very rare amidst mankind—one that surely may avail to atone for much.

Those words were the last on her lips for many moments. From the gloom and stillness of the hut, where there was a depth of shadow only broken by the green mosses that strewed the floor and the grey flash of a tame pigeon*s wing guarding its brood in the farthest nook, she looked out at the luxuriance of colour and the blaze of sun, whilst her thoughts were sunk into the past.

He did not break her musings; his own thoughts were filled with her history, of which he still knew, in truth, but so little, yet which seemed to him told