Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/268

Rh words that you might lead me off the scent of my vengeance; you turned a living lie to harbour a murderer? Such vileness is not in woman! You a slave of your senses!—a priestess of vice! Oh, God! Say the whole world is faLse, but not you!" She held silence still. Her head dropped lower and lower, as though each word of that appeal were a hurled stone that beat her down lower and lower in her abasement.

He forced her upward in his arms with the unwitting violence of suffering, and strained her once more to his embrace, and covered with kisses her lips, her brow, her bosom.

"Say it—say it. Say the world lies and you are true, or—or—I shall end your life and mine!"

Her eyes, heavy with the mists of a great misery, fathomless and hopeless like the eyes of the Fates in Greek sculptures, gazed up to his.

"Do you dream I would stay your hand? It were best so—so I should be yours yet."

"Mine! What then?—you love me though you are my traitress!"

"One may have guilt and yet have love," she muttered, faintly.

He shuddered as he heard her; in the answer