Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/318

Rh lacerated and bruised; then they forced her down on to the yellow grasses that grew lank and long among the fallen temple-stones, and passed the ropes that bound her round a block of travestine. From the moment that she had asked for his deliverance, she had never spoken.

He was so near her that, stretching her hand out had she been free, she could have touched him where they had laid him down. His pain-racked limbs were stiff and motionless; he could not have stirred one step to save his life; his frame was racked with cramp, and the virus from the insects' teeth seemed to eat like vitriol into his flesh; his face was buried in the grasses as his forehead rested on his arm; he could not bear to look upon her; he could not bear to feel her gaze was on him. To the watching eyes of the soldiers about them, to the certainty of captivity, or worse, that waited them, tkey were both unconscious; all that either knew was that presence of the other, which surpassed any martyrdom to which military and priestly power could ever bring them.

There was silence for some time around; the chief of the scanty troop had sent northward for orders. He was uncertain what to do, and whither to take them. In a thing of so much