Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/15

4 not have been wilder in their rage than were these sons of peace, who took in one brief hour payment for all that had been silenced, and iced, and fettered under the weight of the Church*s rule. The sight of a woman's loveliness lashed like a scourge the futile envy roused beforehand in them by the stranger who had broken their bread, and who had showed them all that they had lost in losing for ever their freedom of will and act. What was at riot in them was not a gaoler's rage or a hireling's terror of chastisement; it was their own heart-sickness, their own rebellion, and despair, which made them savage as murderers. For the only time in all his life a deadly fear came on Erceldoune—fear for her. He glanced down once on her, and her eyes gave him back a smile proud, serene, resolute, sweet beyond all tenderness—a smile that said, as though her lips spoke it, "Remember!" It nerved him afresh, as though the courage of Arthur, the power of Samson, poured by it into bis veins and limbs. He had sworn to give her the freedom of death, if that of life were beyond bis reach; the memory of his promise made him mad with that desperate strength whereby men, in their agony, reach that which, told or heard in the coolness of calm reason, seems a