Moths by Ouida — page 327: what you’re looking at

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

a en ee i ee le a ¥ o' a . x 2 - - or MOTHS, ba 320 She stopped him with a gesture. | “TI will not affect to misunderstand; there is no good in affec- tation, but do not speak so to me. Icannot hear it. I thank you for your courage at Villafranca. Iam not ungrateful, but we must not see each other, unless it be in the world.” ‘* You did not say that at Villafranca.” ‘‘My husband had not then said it to me.” | Bashi moved and faltered a little, as if he had been struck a Ow. ‘** You obey Prince Zouroff!” he exclaimed, with disdain, and petulance, and passion. ‘* 1 obey the word I gave Prince Zouroff.” Silence fell between them. Vere was very pale; she wus still seated; there was a sort of faintness on her; she had no time for thought or resolution; she only clung by instinct to one of the creeds of her childhood, the creed that a promise given was sacred. Correze stood beside her, checked, mortified, chafed. and hum- bled. He, the most eloquent and the most ardent lover of his time, was mute and wounded, and could find no word at the in- stant that could speak for him. Hewas struck dumb, and all the vivid imagining, the fervent persuasiveness, the poetical fluency that nature had given to him and art had perfected fled away from him as though they had never been his servants to command, and left him mute and helpless. Vere looked away from him at the blue shining sea. ‘‘Tf you think of me,” she said, slowly, ‘‘if you think of me as you thought when you sang the Coupe d’Or, you will go now.” | ‘‘ With no other word?’ ‘* My life is hard enough,” she murmured. ‘* Do not make it harder.” : There was an unconscious appeal in the words that, from a woman so proud and so silent, touched him to the quick. All his passions longed to disobey her, but his tenderness, his chivalry, his veneration, obeyed. ‘‘I told my husband not Jong ago that you honored me,” she added, in a low voice. ‘*‘Do not let me think that I deceived myself and him.” Correze bent his head. ‘“‘T will never deceive you,” he said, simply, ‘‘and at any cost {f will obey you.” | He looked at her once; her eyes were still gazing away from him at the sea. He lingered an instant, then he laid on her knee some forget-me-nots he had gathered in the brooks above, and left her. Acrossthe wet sands and the disordered detritus of the beach his light swift step bore him quickly to the edge of tie murmuring sea. There was a boat there, an old brown rowing ° boat, with its owner mending nets on its bench. In a few moments the old boat was pushed in the water, the fisherman willingly bent to his oars—Correze also was rowing—. with the helm set for Honfleur. When he was far away on the water, he looked back, but then only: Vere sat motionless, 7 comicbooks cc |