Moths by Ouida — page 303: what you’re looking at

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

MOTHS. 299 A great emotion, a sort of fear, came upon Vere as she once more saw the walls of her house in Paris, | For in Paris was Correze. In the honor and loyalty of her soul it seemed to her that she ought never to see his face or hear his voice again. She would have been willing, could she have chosen, to go far away from all the luxuries and homage of the world, to be buried in humility and obscurity, laboring for God and man, and bearing always in ee memory that song which had been raised like a sword in her efense, When atthe end of the long cold journey—long and cold, de- spite all that wealth could do to abridge and luxury to rob it of its terrors—she saw the pale January light of a Paris morning shine on the ‘‘ Slave ” of Gerome in her bedchamber, on the table beneath the picture was a great bouquet of roses; with the roses — was a little sprig of sweet-brier. To be in leaf in the winter she knew that the little homely cottage plant must have had the care of hothouse science. She did not need to ask who had sent her that welcome once more, _ She bent her face down on the roses, and her eyes were wet. Then she put them away, and fell on her knees, and prayed the old simple prayer—simple and homely as the sweet-brier—to be delivered from evil. At the same time her husband, who had driven not to his own house but straight to the Faubourg Saint-Germain, was standing amidst the gay chinoiseries of the Duchesse Jeanne’s famous boudoir. The duchess was laughing and screaming; he was looking down with bent brows. | ‘‘Oh, can you think for a moment the story is not known to all Paris?” she was crying. ‘* How could you—how could you— with a hundred people there to hear? My dear, it was only I who kept it out of ‘Figaro.’ Such a lovely story as it was, and of course they made it still better. My dear, how stupid you are!— blind as a bat, asa mole! To be sure, we are all dying now te see the first signs of your conversion. How will you begin Will you go to church? will you drive your mother-in-law round the lake? will youtake an oath never to enter a cafe? Dotell me how you mean to begin your reformation. It will be the drollest thing of the year!” ‘Ii vous plait de plaisanter,” said her visitor, stiffly, between his shut teeth. When he left the Hotel de Sonnaz, the half-formed resolution which he had made to be less unworthy of his wife had faded away; he felt galled, stung, infuriated. Casse-une-Croute, and the other companions of his licentious hours, found him gullen, fierce, moody. When they rallied him, he turned on them sav- agely, and made them feel that, though he had chosen to toy with them and let them stuff themselves with his gold, he was their master and their purchaser—a tyrant that it was dangerous - to beard, a lion with whom it was death to play. There was strength in his character, though it had been wasted in excesses of all kinds and in a life of utter selfishness and self- indulgence; and this strength left in him a certain manliness (ef o) m comicbooks * u ’ i 1 ’