Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/263

252 be treachery in you. It may be that you elect to forsake me because you cannot reveal to me that full truth of your past which should be one of my marriage-ríghts. This is how I judge you. If I judge rightly—I said to you that you could not stretch my tenderness further than I would yield it. I say so now; trust only my love, it shall never fail you."

"Oh, God! cease, or you will kill me!" She swayed forward and sank down at his feet, her brow and bosom bruised on the cold jagged floor of the cavern. She had exceeding strength, but she had not strength enough to hear those tender words and give them no response; to behold this limitless forgiveness stretched to her, and leave him to think her too callous, too abased, to return to it even gratitude and repentance; to know that, as he judged her, he struck to the very core of fact, and rendered her but sheer and rightful justice, yet that the acceptance of even this justice at his hands was denied her through an alien crime.

He stood above her, the great dew gathering on his forehead; the evidences against her that her accuser had uncoiled one by one in so close a sequence thronged on his memory; her attitude, her misery, her abasement, had so much of guilt in