Moths by Ouida — page 348: what you’re looking at

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

B44 MOTHS. moments. The snow fell; the wind moaned; the gray dull atmosphere seemed between him and the woman he loved, like a barrier of ice. He said abranay almost in a whisper, ‘‘The world says you should divorce him: you have the right——” ‘¢T have the right.” ‘““Then you will use it?’ ‘‘No—no,” she answered, after a pause. ‘I will not take any public action against my husband.” ‘‘He wishes you to divorce him?” ‘‘No doubt. I shall be here until I do so.” ‘‘And that will be?” “* Never.” ‘© Never?” She shook her head. ‘¢T think,” she said, in a very low tone, ‘‘if you understand me at all, you understand that I would never do that. Those courts are only for shameless women.” He was silent. All that it wasin his heart to urge he dared not even hint. A great anguish seemed to stifle speech in him, He could have striven against every other form of opposition, but he could not strive against this which sprang from her very paeore from the inmost beauty and holiness of the soul that he ored. The salt tears rose in his eyes. “‘' You have indeed kept yourself unspotted from the world!” he said, wearily; and then there was silence. It lasted long; suddenly he broke it, and all the flood-gates of his eloquence were opened, and all the suffering and the worship that were in him broke up to light. ‘‘Forgive me,” he said, passionately. ‘‘ Nay, perhaps you will never forgive; and yet speak I must. What will you do with your life? Will you shut it here in ice, like an imprisoned thing, for sake of a guilty and heed!ess man, a coarse and thankless master? Will you let your years go by like beautiful flowers whose bloom no eyes behold? ‘Will you live in solitude and joy- lessness for the sake of a brute who finds his sport in shame? Your marriage was an error, a frightful sacrifice, a martyrdom: will you bear it always? will you never take your rights to liberty and light? will you never be young in your youth?” ‘‘T am his wife,” said Vere, simply; ‘‘ nothing can change that.” She shuddered a little as she added, ‘‘God himself cannot undo what is done.” ‘‘And he leaves you for Jeanne de Sonnaz!” ‘‘Trule my life by my own measure, not by his. He forgets that he is my husband, but I do not forget that I am his wife.” ‘* But why remember it? He has ceased to deserve the remem- brance; he never deserved it; never in the first hour of your marriage to him,” | Vere’s face flushed. “Tf I forgot it, what should I be better than the wife of Paul de Sonnaz?” | «You are cruel!” _ ‘omicbooks.co