Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/133

122 you? Have you not said that you will cleave to me through all? Have you not refused to believe even my own word against me?" "God knows it, yes! But" "Here is the first test, then; were your oaths empty words?"

He was silent; he stood motionless and unnerved under the brief touch of the rebuke. She knew that she had bound him in those withes of honour that he would never break; and she knew that she had touched him in the one noble weakness that laid him utterly at her will and mercy. She loosened her hold from him; she stood apart, and left him free.

"Go, if you will. Suspect me, if you will. Avenge your wrong, if you will. But if you do, we never meet again."

His lips parted, without sound; an anguish of appeal looked at her from his eyes; he stood consumed by the passions of his hate and of his love that strove with one another in a deadly conflict.

"Choose," she said, simply—and waited.

His chest heaved with a mighty sigh.

"Great Heaven! You ask me to spare him after such a críme!"

"I ask you nothing. Take your vengeance, it is