Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/315

304 of the sunlight were all one misty blaze of colour to him. He heard, and his lips moved faintly. "She shall not suffer—for me."

So far as thought could be clear to him, he thought that, having sinned so deeply against him, remorse at the last had struck ber, and drawn her here to bear witness for bim. He thought that there yet dwelt in her too much still of native courage, of inborn nobility, to let her rest in safety and security, whilst through her sin, and to give her freedom, be endurhd the doom to which she had cast him out; he thought that, so far, sbe was true to herself, though false with worse than a Delilah's treachery to him. To take vengeance upon her was a poor, vain, wretched quittance that never glanced by him; a grossness, a baseness that could have no place with him; his great tortured passion could no more have slaked itself in such a payment than it could have wreaked its wrong by the bruising and the marring of that mere loveliness of form which had been the lure and instrument of his destruction. The Italian swore a heavy oath.

"Are you mad? Why, of her own testimony she has been your ruin!" "Of a woman's compassion she says it—out of her own mouth you would not condemn her?"