Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/93

82 sublime folly as yours? You give me your life; yet never ask me once of mine."

"What marvel in that? You have said, you wish silence on it."

"And how many would heed such a wish?"

"I know not how many would But it is law to me."

"Ah! you are rash as Tannhauser. I told you so long ago."

"And I said then as now, Tannhauser was a cur. She was his; knowing that, what wanted he? If he had had faith aright, and love enough, he would have wrested her out from the powers of darkness. He would not have yielded her up—not even to herself. Evil is black in us all; love, that is love in my reading, does not surrender us to it, or for it."

The deep glow of his eyes gazed into hers, speaking a thousand-fold more than his words. He knew that the chains of some remorse bound her; to fear this for himself never dawned on the careless courage of that which she had well termed his "sublime folly," but to free her from its dominion was a resolve with him not less resolute than had been his resolve to deliver her beauty from her captor's fetters.

Her face was softened to a marvellous richness,