Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/26

Rh should fall dead at her feet when that midnight ríde should have reached its end? He should have passed to his grave with her.

Where the jagged iron had been hurled against him, the rent nerves throbbed, and the linen wae stained with blood; where his rival had strained him in that deadly embrace, the breadth of his chest was bruised as though weightily strucb by a mace, and compressed as though tight bound in bands of steel; but he felt none of its paín, he knew none of its suffering; he only knew that she rode beside him, that through him she was saved, that once his arms had held her, that still in all the width of the world there was none with her in her extremity save himself,—whose love she had forbidden, yet whose love, she had seen, outlasted all, and only asked of her a place with her in her danger, a place near her in her death.

No words passed between them; the breathless passage of their flight left no space for speech, and the soft hush of the darkened world was too solemn to be broken. They had passed away from the beaten track, lest any should see and mark their course, and had borne straight across the country westward to where the bay lay—breaking through the blossomed vines, the sheets of maize, the nets