Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/39

28 on his breast, and by the flickering light shed through the leaves she saw where the blows had fallen fast as hail upon his chest, that was strong as any corslet of steel, but blackened and beaten by them like the steel after a long close battle; his head had sunk back, he had reeled down senseless from exhaustion; through the crushed arums the slender stream of the blood still flowed till the snowy cups were filled with it as though they were purpled by wine; she had looked many a time on death, and death seemed to her on his face now, as it had done when beneath the mountain pines she had first seen the carrion birds waiting and hovering above his sightless eyes.

For the moment she had no strength, no consciousness to seek to save him; she knelt beside him, knowing nothing save that through her he too must be sacrificed; that for her this life also had been laid down, uncounting its own loss, yielding up its breath without reproach, forced nobly on to perish in her defence. She stooped over him, with that look in her eyes with which she had gazed down on the lifeless frame of Cario of Viana, only that now, beside remorse, there were a grief and a passion deeper yet than remorse alone.