Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/207

196 Away in the world again be would again cleave to his old creeds, and deem this moment womanish weakness; but here in the loneliness of the morning, under the sting of an intolerable torment, the man he hated was great in bis sight, and he himself was base exceedingly. Where he stood, with no eyes on bim that could read bis shame, a red flush slowly stole over the wanness of his face; none living could have brought it there, but the scourge of his own thoughts did.

For though he had fallen willingly, the fall seemed to him hideously vile; as in the grey, cold, unpitying light of a dawn that brings him no slumber, the sins and the burdens that a man counts recklessly, and bears lightly, in the crowds of the daytime and the dissipations of the night, stand out in their true colour, and grow unendurable in his sight and his memory.

But the better instinct too soon perished; there was passion in him, and passion choked conscience; he could not have told whether he most loved or most hated this woman, but whichever emotion swayed him furthest, the jealousy that he had so often laughed at as a barbarism of a bygone age was born of both, and in its fire quenched all other things. He felt for her that covetous, sensual,