Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/206

Rh but a pain that sprang from, and that moved, a deeper, better thing,—a recognition, tardy and unwilling though it was, of some greatness he had missed in missing truth; some base and guilty cowardice that he had stooped to when once truth had passed from off his lips, banished with a scoff as only fit for fools.

Beyond jealousy, beyond hatred, beyond every other feeling in him as he stood looking southward at the great shaft of russet stone that screened the pathway of his rival from his sight, there was on him then an intense humiliation. Beside the sincerity, the fealty, the self-surrender, the brave patience of a generous trust, his own subtleties looked so unworthy, his own fine crafb so poor; another conld render her a love that deemed life itself well lost for her, and he—he was her traitor!

There was enough of honour and enough of tenderness in him for the contrast to strike into him, hard, sharp, swift as steel. This man whom he had contemned with all the mockery of his brilliant mind had grown great in his sight simply through the ennobling influence of a mighty passion and a heroic faith. He still cursed these with his lips as insanity, as idiocy, but in his heart he knew their greatness—a greatness that he had by his own choice, his own act, put far from him for ever.