Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/130

Rh "Feared it! What is he to you?" She was silent.

"What is he to you—this brigand, this brute, this vilest of the vile scum of Europe?" He spoke with the imperious vehemence, the intolerable horror, that possessed him. She was silent still; over her face a hot flush came and went, the flush of an intense humiliation.

"What do you know of him? Answer me, before I wring it out of his throat!"

She shuddered where she stood; but with a strength scarce less than his own, she held him from the place where the Greek slept, and drew him by sheer force farther and farther outward.

"Let him be! He has been the curse of my fate; he will be the curse of yours."

"Never! I will stamp his life out where he lies. Let me go—let me go!" "Go for what?" "To deal with him—justly."

"Justly!"

"Yes. Men kill murderers; and it was through no lack of will in him he was not one. I will not kill him sleeping, but I will wash my wrongs out once for all. Let me go!"

She flung her arms close around him, so that he