Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/253

242 her lips? All his soul went out to her in a great cry.

"Oh God! you are mine—you are mine! What do I ask else—or care?" It was the baser strength of his passion that cried out in those burning words; their fire thrilled her, their echo awoke in her; yet with them the force, which had never before then failed her, revived. Here lay his danger—this danger, born of her own loveliness, that would abase him, and allure him, and destroy him; the danger, which filled her with one instinct alone, the instinct to tear him at all cost from the snake's nest which held his foe, to compel him at all hazards from herself, through whom his destruction came. She rose and locked her hands upon his arm, and pressed him forward out towards the mouth of the cavern.

"Go—go! This place is death for you."

"What!—and you are here?"

A smile passed over her face; the smile that is the resignation, the self-irony, of an absolute despair. "He doubts at last!" she thought. "He can be saved through that."

And she had strength in her to hope from her soul that such doubt might wrong her deeply