Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/135

124 own cause of hatred against this man, when once he saw that she endured this poignant and deadly pain through his assassin, this unutterable misery at sight of the sleeping Greek, whose face turned upward, with the sunset warmth and flickering shadow of the leaves playing on it, thus had broken all their dreams of the future, all the sweetness of their solitude.

She lay passive some moments in his arms, her whole frame shaken by convulsive, tearless sobs.

"Oh God!" she moaned. "And I dreamt of a Future, while he was living there!"

A gloom like night swept over her lover's face; the evil spirit was upon him, which in the midnight chase through the moonlight of the Bosphorus shore had been on him, thirsting for his enemy's blood. He stooped his head over her, and his whisper was fearfully brief.

"Let me go, and he will not be living long."

He had surrendered to her; he had yielded up to her this vengeance, which had been the one goal of such ceaseless search, such vain desire; but though he had let her for awhile hold his hands from it, his whole heart and soul were in tempestuous rebellion still; his blood was hot for war, his conscience was strangled by hatred.