Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/42

Rh disarmed. The glory that shone one moment on his face she had never seen save in her youth's earliest dreams of the glory on the faces of the gods; for—let the world lie of her as it would—to none had she ever spoken as she spoke now to him, while her voice was sweet as sorcery and filled with unshed tears that would not gather in her eyes, but were dríven back to her heart in grief that mingled with the poignancy of softer thoughts and tenderness unloosed at last.

Then, at last, its ecstasy reached him, and he knew that it was truth—truth that rushed through him like the wild potency of some eastern drug, burning, blinding, lulling every sense like opium-mingled wine. He lifted himself from where he lay, he stretched his arms out to her, he strove with futile effort to strain his gaze through the mists of pain, to free his strength from the bonds of exhaustion; and once more it was in vain—once more he fell back, powerless, senseless, yet with his thoughts keeping their hold on their one memory of her, and still with that glow as of light upon his face. His lips moved faintly in words that scarcely stirred the grave-like silence of the deep oak-woods: