Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/358

Rh own; in the night-silence and the darkness that was on them his voice thrilled through her "sweet as remembered kisses after death."

"Do you think they shall ever part us now? Death shall unite us, if Life would divorce us."

The hours passed, and they were left in solitude. As they had forgot all other life save their own, so by it they seemed forgotten. Through the heavy masonry of the iron-bound walls, no echo of the world without came to them; on the hush and the gloom of the chamber there was no sound, save only the soft gliding of a night-bird's restless wing. Whatever fate rose for them with the dawn, this night at least was theirs: there is no love like that which lives victorious even beneath the shadow of death; there is no joy like that which finds its paradise even amidst the cruelty of pain, the fierce long struggle of despair.

Never is the voluptuous glory of the sun so deep, so rich, as when its last excess of light burns above the purple edge of the tempest-cloud that soars upward to cover and devour it. The hours passed, and the rays of the morning slowly stole inward through the narrow casement,