Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/80

Rh by shot, or by steel: you will pay for me, it may be, if ever I be yours, no less price yourself than death. Now do you not know why, though it rent my heart in twain, I would surrender you up, and never look upon your face again, my love—my love!—would you but take my warning?"

The first words had been almost cold from their enforced control; with the last a yearning, aching desire trembled in her voice, which would have told him, had no other moment told him, that what she felt for him was not pity nor gratitude, but passion itself. He heard in silence to the end, as one who has his own resolve set immutably, and listens to the utterance of counsel that has no more likelihood to make him swerve from it than the beating of the winds to move the rocks that they pass over. Not that he heard her lightly, or believed that undue fear made her count the peril for him with needless exaggeration; he knew this was not in her nature, but he was wholly careless of what price might be exacted from him for allegiance to her, and he was as firm to cleave it, whatever that price might be, as a soldier to cleave to his standard while there is sight enough left in his dying eyes to watch one gleam of the silken folds above his head that shall never droop through him till men have killed, not conquered,