Moths by Ouida — page 218: what you’re looking at

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

: : ”* q . ' a ) ¥ ’ ; ' ' ‘ ' . 7 co Fre f » , ; ; ‘ : . rt ’ *- ie. <14 MOTHS of the blinds, the pretty quaint figures moving up and down und the trees on the opposite bank, the scent of the mountain straw- berries and the Alpine flowers, the fragrance of the pine woods filling the air, the voicefof Correze, melodious even in its laughter, crossed by the clear, harsh, imperious tones of Jeanne de Sonnaz —all seemed to Vere like the scenes and sounds of a dream, all blent together into a sweet confusion of sunshine and shade, of silver speech and golden silence. She had longed to meet him; she had dreaded to meet him, Month after month her heart had yearned and her courage had quailed; his eyes had said so much, and his lips had said nothing, ¢ They had been strangers so long, and now, all in a moment, he was sitting at her table in familiar intimacy, he who had sung the Priere of Sully-Prudhomme. Her eyes shone with unaccustomed light; her serious lips had a smile trembling on them; the coldness and the stillness which were not natural to her years gradually changed and melted, as the snow before the sunbeams of summer; yet she felt restless ‘e and apprehensive. She wondered what he thought of her; if he condemned her in haste, as one among the many bought by a brilliant and loveless marriage; if he believed that the moth had een the star and dropped to mere earthly fire? She could not tell. Correze was not the Saint Raphael whohad given her the rose; he was the Correze of Paris, witty, brilliant, careless, wordly- wise, bent on amusing and disarming the Duchesse de Sonnaz. Vere, who knew nothing of his motive, or of her peril, felt a chill of faint, intangible disappointment. She herself had no duality of nature; she had nothing of the flexible, changeful, many-sided temper of the artist; she was always Vere, whether she pleased or displeased, whether she were happy or unhappy; whether she were with king or peasant she was always what she had been born, always Vere Herbert, never Vera Zouroif, though church and law had called her so. ‘*She is like a pearl,” thought Correze, watching her; ‘‘she has nothing of the opal or the diamond; she does not depend on light; she never changes or borrows color; she is like a pearl; nothing alters the pearl—till you throw it into the acid.” Meanwhile, as he thought so, he was making Jeanne de Son. | naz shed tears of inextinguishable laughter at stories of his friends of the Comedie Francaise; for, in common with all great ladies, her appetite was insatiable for anecdotes of the women whom she would not have visited, yet whom she copied, ae and, though she would not have confessed it, often envied. *“* Le diable est entre,” thought the Duchesse Jeanne, ruffling the moss-rose amidst her lace, amused. ‘* Le diable wentrera jamais,” thought Correze, who guessed hike nearly what she was thinking. ere was almost always silent. Every now and then she found his soft, pensive eyes looking at her, and then she looked away and her face grew warm, ; . What did be think of her? she was asking herself uneasily; ve ~~ €omicbooks.com | : :