Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/62

51 can lay bare their hearts to you like an open book, make one of them the holder of your honour, they alone merit it, and I am not amongst them. Who can know me as I know myself? Believe me, then, when I tell you the greatest cruelty I can do to you is to bestow on you my love."

He heard her silently; but not as he had heard her bid him leave her and condemn her the last night they had stood together above the sea at Capri. He knew now that she loved him; knowing that, he refused to take a decree of divorce between them, even from her lips; he claimed a title that he would never surrender, though through years he should vainly assert his right to it. The strong passíon and the staunch patience of his nature were welded together, persistent and invulnerable. "Let me judge that," he said, simply. "If I preferred misery at your hands, rather than paradise at any other's, I should have the right to make the choice."

"Yes, and I the right to guard you from the fruits of your own madness. You love me with a love that needs an angel to be worthy it; and I—I have thought of late, that if those tyrants yonder had killed me under the worst tortures they could frame, they would have done on me no more than my just