Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/30

Rh tracking her down, even though—if she ever again reached her freedom and her sovereignty once more—she should forget that he once had served her thus, and bid him go and see her face no more. He loved her with an exceeding love; not less would he have brought her from her misery, or less have laid down his life to save hers, though he had known that, dying thus, she should never have seen even one look that thanked him.

Passion was stronger than pain, and gave him unconsciousness of it, as it had given him the thews and the sinews of giants in the contest whereby he had freed her; though the monk's blows had been rained on him like a smith's blows on his anvil, and his breast had been bruised and dinted and swollen by the grip of his priestly foe when they had strained and stifled each other like wrestlers in the death-fling, he had no feeling of suffering, no feeling of exhaustion. The glow of triumph was on him; the fragrance of the sultry night seemed to steep his senses in voluptuous delight; the fierceness of contest and slaughter were still hot in his veins, and the lulling charm of a dream fell upon him while the world lay sleeping in silence and darkness.