Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/338

Rh her in the dusky light; he took but one sense from her words—that the infidelity of her life had been against others; that though she had lied to him and beguiled him and forsaken him, against his rival she had done deeper sin than against himself. "You love me?" he muttered, as he strove to thrust her back. "Be silent, then—Go, go, go! I have no strength,—if once I pardon, never shall I resist you!" Pardon! Its softened mercy took the shape of deadliest temptation. It looked sweet as life to forgive;—to forgive, and steep all wrong, all pain, all hate in one divine oblivion; to forgive, and heed not the pollution of the soul, so only the grace and graciousness of mortal form were his; to forgive, and call sin grace, shame honour, and treachery truth, if so alone the heaven he had lost were his.

She rose up, and faced him, silently awhile; the great slow tears swam before her sight; her tongue was stricken of its fluency; she knew that for her, through her, by her, this man was condemned to a living death; yet that it was not his lost life but her lost purity which was his despair now.

Then she went to him ere he could repulse her,