Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/334

Rh as she had fallen when he had been bound beneath his scourgers.

He did not move, nor touch her; his eyes were fastened senselessly upon her; he shivered as though hot iron seared him. "Can you not leave me in peace to suffer?" he muttered. "Off—off—off! What I loved is dead! Ay—you tempt me—you bring me her beauty—you would give me her kisses, her passion, her sweetness, her shame. I will not—I will not! What I loved is dead. I am faithful."

All through the hours of the night, dreams of her had mocked, and pursued, and tortured, and assailed him; he was drunk as with the fumes of wine with the burning of the love that still lived; his mind, weakened and delirious, had only been conscious of phantoms that seemed to throng on him, tempting him in a thousand shapes, binding him down the slave of his senses, forcing on him joys torn out from the hell of guilt. "What matter what you be—what matter what death come by you, so you are mine?" The old, old subtlety that has tempted all men from the first hour that they fell by woman, had besieged him through all the lonely watches of the night. Now he knew not her living presence from the visions of his temptress.

In horror she knelt before him.