Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/75

64 the pulses of his heart throb faster and the current of the blood glow in his veins, while, with a gentleness that seemed to him balm enough to heal mortal wounds themselves, she wound the silken bands over the gash that the blunted axe had hacked, and the width of his chest that the rain of blows had covered with livid marks like the marks where a scourge has fallen.

"God grant that these be the last things you suffer through me."

The words escaped ber almost unconsciously, while for the first time since her eyes had gazed in their set anguisb on the dead men lying round ber in the banqueting-ball of Antina, the tears gathered in tbem like the gathering drops of a storm, and fell one by one slowly on his hair and on his breast. She had made many endure danger and wretchedness, risk and despair, without pity; it was but fitting retribution that she had no power to ward them off from the only life for whicb she had ever cared.

He held her hands close against his heart.

"I can never suffer now!"

It seemed so to him. Keeping this, her love, be thought that no vicissitude or bitterness of life could have an hour's power to move him; that no fate