Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/277

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266
IDALIA

by the blaze of her eyes as they unclosed, wide and wild, to tho tawny light.

"Go, go!" she cried afresh. "You could hear what he called me, and yet hold your peace! Go—there are wrongs gods themselves could not pardon."

He knew it; he turned slowly away, and went from her glance, from her presence.

She rose faintly, and reeling slightly; looking out at the darkness that closed her in, whilst for all the world without the morning sun was shining. She was like one drunk with alcohol; hor brain was stunned, yet her force intensified; the power and the vitality in her were strong almost to ferocity—the ferocity of that unbearable suffering which in in itself a madness. Like some lithe-limbed leopardess stung to bloodthirstiness by the shot that had struck it from an unseen hand, she passed swiftly across the depth of shadow, to tho place where the boy Borto lay sleeping still in the intense slumber of long fatigue.

She laid her hand upon hím. "Wake."

He did awaken, and sprang wonderingly from his bed of dry sea-grasses.

"Illustrissima! What is there?"

"There in need of you."