Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/45

34 stems, and on whose fallen altars and whose shattered sculptures the lizard made her shelter and the wind-sown grasses seeded and took root. Of the once graceful marble beauty and the incense-steeped stones of sacrifice nothing remained but moss-grown shapeless fragments, buried beneath a pall of leaves by twice a thousand autumns. Yet the ancient sanctity still rested on the nameless, pathless woods; the breath of an earlier time, of a younger season of the earth, seemed to lie yet upon the untroubled forest ways; the whisper of the unseen waters hád a dream-like, unreal cadence; in the deep shade, in the warm fragrance and the a heavy gloom, there was a voluptuous yet mournful charm—the world seemed so far, the stars shone so near; there were the sweetness of rest and the oblivion of passion. When her lips had touched his, life had seemed to return to him; he lay in a trance vague as a rapturous dream. He was powerless to answer her; he had no consciousness, save the one sense of a joy that in its intensity was half delirium; he had no remembrance, save that he held himself dying, and felt death, glorious, welcome as the richest life that ever poured its golden wine out in the sunlight of youth—felt like the lover who, slaughtered at his