Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/317

306 and the prolonged resistance of lions; they saw now that he could suffer and submit with the mute-enduring patient self-surrender and self-command of those saints of whom the priests had told them, in their boyhood, dim, pathetic, ancient legends, half forgot and half remembered. They yielded him a certain reluctant, wondering respect, and they brought him, with more gentle usage, where the thickly-woven olive and acanthus made a shadow from the sun, and gave him water to slake his burning throat, and drew the linen folds of his dress over his wounded chest with what was, for them, almost tenderness. To her they had no such pity; they knew her a revolutionist, a rebel, an infidel, as they were told, a woman of evil, murderous, and fearful sorcery, who could revengo with the "evil eye" all those who incensed her by resisting her seductions; they hated her with a great sullen hate, the stronger, because it was the barbarous hatred that is born of fear. But for their commander they would have shot her down with a volley from their carbines, that the fatal regard might gaze on them no more with the glance that they believed could wither them like a sorceress' incantations. They bound her arms behind her with ruthless severity, till her fair skin was