Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/128

Rh other flung idly outward, in the loose linen dress of an Italian mellon-seller, lay the Greek, Conrad Phaulcon. Such disguise as he had given himself could not shield him from the glance of the man he had wronged.

Erceldoune motioned her to him with a gesture that let the leaves fall for an instant back into their places; his teeth were clenched, his words hissed broken through them, his eyes were alight with the blood-thirst of desert animáis.

"Look—look!" he gasped. "There—at last—there in my power—the brute who shot me down"

He swept the boughs backward and upward once more with the dash of his arm, and she bent to look through the twilight of the leaves; her face changed to the whiteness of death as her eyes fell on the upturned face of the sleeping man, her lips drew their breath gaspingly; a shiver of unutterable horror ran through her,

"He!—he!" That one word seemed all her voice could whisper, and in it a whole world of loathing, remorse, hatred, and shame unbearable seemed told.

Erceldoune, with the lifted boughs still held above their heads, stood and gazed at her in a horror scarce