Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/298

Rh Yet when they came to him ever and again and asked hím if he would speak at last, his silence remained unbroken. He was faithful to those who had betrayed him.

He could receive release, as he could take vengeance, by the utterance of one word. He could deliver over his assassin to justice, and unloose his traitress to the doom that waited her, by the same sign that should free him from this slow excruciating death. He could cease to suffer, and become the just accuser of those by whom he was destroyed. He could sever his bonds, and divide those whose guilty union was a worse agony to him than it lay in the power of his torturers to deal. His own fate and theirs rested in his choice.

And he bore his martyrdom and kept silence. The supreme hour of his passion had come to him and tempted him, and found him strong. The purity of his honour would not let him take a traitorous shame even against those who dealt him treachery; the great love in him could not forsake her utterly, although itself forsaken and betrayed.

The bond of his word was as religion to him still; and in his sight, though fallen, lost, dishonoured, she still was sacred.