Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/357

346 In the darkness that was about them, she rather felt than saw the infinite tenderness of his eyes as they gazed down on her:

"Hush! Would you wrong me still? Can you not think one hour that lays your heart bare to me thus, and brings me thus the surety of your innocence, is worth to me a lifetime of common joy and soulless pleasure? Let its cost be what it will—it is well bought."

She knew he held it so; and for this, that he loved her with this exceeding holiness of love; for this, that the restoration of her nobility and honour in his sight was priceless to him, as no paradise purchased by her crime could ever have been; for this, the woe that she had wrought him, eat like iron into her soul.

"Well bought!" she echoed. "It will be bought by a living agony of endless years! Manhood, pride, peace, joy, all killed in you; your very name lost, your very fate forgotten, till your hair is white with sorrow and your eyes are blind with age! Ah, my beloved, what matter what I be! It is I who have condemned you to this! It is I who have been your ruin!"

His arms drew her upward, close against the heart that only beat for her; his hot lips quivered on her