Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/379

368 spoken falsely against her honour, who had given her beauty to the scourge, her freedom to the chains of her enemies; and he who was no coward, but bold and sure, and of self-control passing those of most men, closed his own eyes involuntarily, as though the lightning smote them, and cowered downward like a shrinking dog.

For what that long, deep, silent gaze had quoted against him was wrong far heavier than that against her own life; wrong against all manhood, as in him stained; against all human nature, as by him shared; against all bonds that bind man to man, as by his treachery dissevered; against all liberty sought for by the nations, as, by his false adoption of its fair name, prostituted. It was this which that one unvarying gaze spoke to him; and there was soul enough left in him to make him know its deepest meaning, and take its deepest agony.

"A traitor!"

Her lips had never spoken the word; but its shame ate into his heart as it ate into the heart of Iscaríot. In that one moment the austere, the divine, the supreme majesty that lies in Truth was revealed to him, and blinded him as the blaze of the heavens blinded Saul of Tarsus. In that one