Moths by Ouida — page 119: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

MOTHS. : “415 _“ Cannot you say that you like me ever so little now?” he per- Pig thinking that all his generosity might have borne some ruit. | ‘‘No, I cannot.” : : He laughed grimly and bitterly. : a4 Seth yet I dare take you, evenas you are, you beautiful, cold ‘* I cannot tell you a falsehood.” ‘* Will you never tell me one?” ** No; never.” *‘I do not believe you; every woman lies.” Vere did not answer in words, but her eyes shone for a mo- ment with ascorn so noble that Sergius Zouroff bent his head before her. | “I beg your pardon,” he said: ‘‘I think you will not lie. But then you are not a maiden only; you are a young saint.” Vere stood aloof from him. The sunshine shone on her fair head, and the long, straight folds of her white dress; her hands were clasped in front of her, and the sadness in her face gave it greater gravity and beauty. ‘‘T am a beast to hold her to her word!” he thought; but the beast in him was stronger than aught else, and’ conquered him, and made him ruthless to her. | She was looking away from him into the blue sky. She was thinking ofthe words, ‘‘ keep yourself unspotted from the world.” She was thinking that she would be always true to this man whom she loathed—always true; that was his right. ‘‘And perhaps God will let me die soon,” she thought, with her childish fancy that God was near and Death an angel. Sergius Zouroff looked at her, hesitated, bowed low, and left the room. ‘¢T am not fit for her; no fitter than the sewer of the street for a pearl!” he thought; and he felt ashamed. Yet he went to his usual companions, and spent the night in drink and play, and saw the sun rise with hot, red eyes; he could not change because she was a saint. | Only a generation or two back his forefathers had bought beau- tiful Persian women by heaping up the scales of barter with strings of pearls and sequins, and had borne off Circassian slaves in forays with simple payment of a lance left in the lifeless breasts of the men who had owned them; his wooing was of the same rude sort. Only, being aman of the world, and his ravishing being legalized by society, he went to the great shops of Paris for his gems, and employed great notaries to write down the terms of barter. The shrinking coldness, the undisguised aversion, of his be- trothed, only whetted his passion to quicker ardor, as the shrieks of the Circassian captives or the quivering limbs of the Persian slaves had done that of his forefathers in Ukraine; and besides, after all, he thought, she had chosen to give herself, hating him, - for the sake of what he was and of all he could bestow. After all, her mother could not have driven her so far unless ambition bad made her in a manner malleable, (eo) ‘comicbooks