Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/259

248 justice from you; I have known your assassin, and kept the knowledge untold to you. I have erred against you—greatly. Think of me what you will, what you must."

The reply was spoken with a cruel mechanical precision: she moved from him and stooped above the pine-logs, seeking their heat. She felt as she had done when once, in a Livonian winter, the night-snows had overtaken and enshrouded her, and the life had begun to turn to ice in her veins.

Something in the very action bespoke a suffering so mute and so intense that it struck to his heart, still so closed to evil and so open to faith, so slow to give condemnation, so quick to render trust and pity. He threw himself beside her, drawing her hands against his breast, searching her eyes with the longing love, the bewildered incredulity, of his own.

"Think of you! What can I think? You are my mistress, my sovereign, my wife; you take my love and yield me yours; you have smiled in my eyes, and lain in my arms, and spoken of a lifetime passed together; and now—now—it is my murderer who is sacred to you and beloved by you—not I!" As though the fire of the words stung her into sudden life, she turned swiftly, all the light and the