Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/198

Rh strangle the adder that has destroyed the life t]iey treasure closest.

Vane, deficient neither in courage nor in supple strength, shook himself loose with a rapid movement, and lifting the pistol from the sands, held it out with a grave, graceful gesture, as though the weapon were a branch of palm.

"Take it back, and lay me dead with it, if you find that I tell you untruth."

"If!"

"Yes—'if.' I am no slanderer weaving a legend; no gossiper trafficking in cobwebs I tell you a hard, unglazed, pitiless fact; there are many such in the history of the woman you imagine has so stain- less, so martyred, so royal a soul! Take back your weapon, and use it if I play you false. You are longing to kill me now—I see that in your look; but you are a lion, not a fox, and so you will not kill in the dark. Make it day about you, broad noonday, by which you can read the depths of your mistress's heart, and then—if she prove guiltless and I a liar—then compénsate yourself as you will."

Erceldoune answered nothing. A dusky reddened light was glowing in the darkness of his eyes, the light that glows in a dog's when the longing to seize and rend is rousing in it; his blood felt like fire; the