Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/381

370 of thought, with that infinitude of reproach, with that passionless scorn, and with that passionless pity on her face, she looked to him like the avenging shape of the honour he had sold, of the land he had betrayed, of the freedom he had surrendered, of the cause he had forsaken. The rebuke of her regard was not hers, but the rebuke of the peoples, weary and abandoned by the leader who bartered them for gold; the scorn of her gaze was not hers, but the scorn of the martyrs of liberty, who through all ages perish willingly, if with their bodies they can purchase one ray of higher light for the world which knows them not until too late.

By her he saw how vile he had become.

By her he saw how high he might have reached.

She had her vengeance.

The impatient fíre of the same demand ran afresh through the revolutionists around him:

"His sentence, Eccellenza!" He never heard. He had passed through all the bitterness of death; it was her look that killed him.

The cry rose louder: "His sentence!"

Then at last she answered them:

"Loose him, and let him go."

A sullen furious yell of dissent that not even