Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/73



the morning rose higher, and its light shone full on both their faces, his was warm, brilliant, eager with incredulous delight; hers was grave, weary, very colourless. To him a very Eden opened; on her a thousand memories weighed. The one saw but the future; the other was pursued with the past. He knew that he had gained the only life that made his worth the living; she knew that she had drawn in with her own the only one that she had ever cared to save.

"Ah! I bring you already only ill," she murmured, as the rays of the risen day, half shadowed still beneath the oak leafage, recalled to them that they were fugitives—fugitives from pursuers never yet known to spare. "You are wounded—you suffer now?" He looked at her with the smile whose sweetness had more tenderness than lies in any words.