Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/258

Rh glowed duskily upon the dilated wondering misery of his eyes.

"Are they one? Answer me!"

She did not answer, nor did her look meet his.

"That man I showed you sleeping is this Greek!"

She held silence still.

"What! You screen him in his crime? What tie has he to you, then?"

Her teeth clenched tight as a vice to keep herself from utterance of the words that rushed to her tongue.

He stared blindly at her; he felt suffocating, drunk, mad; he stood beside this woman, whose every tress of hair he loved, whose mere touch could send the vivid joy like lightning through his veins, and he arraigned her as her judge for having union and collusion with his attempted slaughterer!

"What is he to you? Where is he now?" he panted. "You called him your worst foe. Do women shelter their foes' guilt thus? You would not let me take my justice on his life. What is his life to you?"

She looked at him with the rigid calm returned upon her face, impenetrable as a mask of stone.

"I said that there were things that you could never know. This is of them. I have withheld your