Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/36

Rh that fatal beauty which many with their last breath in the battlefield or on the scaffold had cursed with bitter reproach, which some—and not so few—had to the last still blessed. So many had died for her!—and now he who had found at her hands but coldness and suffering, and gone without reward for a loyalty passing all that even she had ever found, lay to all seeming dead or dying at her feet; as a noble hound dies for its mistress' sake, dies faithful to the last, though never may her hand have given him one caress, though never may her lips have spoken more than careless command or chill dismissal.

She knew then that she loved him; loved him, not with pity, nor with disdain for it as weakness, nor with mere warmth to one who had risked all things in her cause, but with a passion answering his own, with a passion holding the world worthless if he no more were numbered with the living. Tonight, when his heart had throbbed against hers; to-night, when his strength had stood between her and her destroyer; to-night, when his promise had been given her to save her with death, if no other freedom were left him wherewith to rescue her; to-night, she had known that she had loved him with