Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/79

68 safely anchored in some pure and peaceful life mine could not touch. Why will men ever love where love is fatal?"

He looked at her with eamest thought, grave and infinitely tender.

"Fatal? What is it that you fear for me?"

"All things."

"All! That is to place but little trust in my strength to endure or to resist. What is it you dread most?" "Myself."

She gaye him back his look, intent as his own, fathomless, and filled with a pain that was half remorse, half prescience.

His face grew very pale. "You mean—you will desert me?"

"No. Not that."

She spoke slowly, as if each word were a pang, then leaned towards him once more with the light of the risen day full on her face, and the splendour of her eyes troubled beyond grief. "No. I never broke a trust; and yours is the noblest ever placed in me. But—cleaving to me—you will have bitter trials for your faith; you will have, most likely, cruel suffering that I shall be powerless to spare you; you will lose me, perhaps, by captivity,