Moths by Ouida — page 271: what you’re looking at

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

MOTHS. TS £82 You are sublime, my dear,” ¢aid the Russian princegs, a little irritably because her own consciousness of her own past smote herand smarted. ‘‘ You are sublime. But you are many octaves higher than our concert pitch. No one now ever thinks in the sort of way that youdo. You would have been a wife for Mil- ton. My brother is, alas! quite incapable of appreciating all that devotion.” *‘His power of appreciation is not the measure of my con- duct,” said Vere, with a contempt that would have been bitter had it not been so weary. ‘* That is happy for him,” said his sister, dryly. ‘‘ But, in sad and sober truth, my Vera, your ideas are too high for the world we live in; you are asaint raising an oriflamme above a holy strife; and we are only a rabble of common maskers—who laugh.” ‘* You can laugh.” ‘*i do not laugh, Heaven knows,” said her sister-in-law, with a glisten of water in her shrewd, bright eyes, that could not bear the candid gaze of Vere. ‘‘Ido not laugh. I understand you. If I never could have been like you, I revere you—yes. But it is of no use, my dear, no use, alas! to bring these true and high emotions into common life. They are too exalted; they are fit for higher air. Roughly and coarsely if you will, but truly, I will tell you there is nothing of nobility, nothing of duty, in marriage, as our world sees it; it is simply a convenience, a somewhat clumsy contrivance to tide over a social difficulty. Do not think of it as anything else; if you do, one day disgust will seize you, your high and holy faiths will snap and break, and then——” | ‘* And then?” | ‘‘Then you will be of all women most unhappy; for I think you could not endure your life if you despised yourself.” ‘‘T have endured it,” said Vere, ina low voice. ‘* You thinkT © have not despised myself every day, every night?” ‘‘Notas I mean. The wrong has been done to you. You have done none. All thedifference lies there—ah, such a difference, my dear! The difference between the glacier and the mud- torrent!” Vere was silent. Then, with a shiver,she drew her wraps about her as the cold wind came over the sea. ‘*Shall we goin the house? It is chilly here,” she said to her sister-in-law. sy CHAPTER XXIII. THE two shooting-months passed at Svir—brilliantly to all the guests, tediously and bitterly to the mistress of the place. pay Dolly had early vanished to see the fair of Nijni Novgorod wit a pleasant party, and Count Rostrow for their guide, and had vague thoughts of going down the river and seeing the spurs of the Caucasus, and meeting her husband in St. Petersburg, — ‘where, so enraptured was she with the country, she almost thought she would persuade him to live. Duc Paul and Duchesse Comicboo cS (eo)