Moths by Ouida — page 349: what you’re looking at

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

MOTHS. | BAD *¢ Cruel?” ‘* Cruel, to me.” He spoke so low that the words scarcely stirred the air, then he knelt down on the ground before her and kissed the hem of her own. ‘*T dare not say to you what I would say, you are so far above all other women, but you know so well, you have known so long, that all my life is yours, to use or throw away as you choose. Long ago I sang to you, and you know so well, I think, all that the song said. I would serve you, I would worship you with the love that is religion, I would leave the stage and the world and art and fame, I would die to men, if I might live for you-——” She shook as she heard him as a tall lily-stem shakes in a strong wind ; she signed wearily ; she was quite silent. Was she insult-. ed, angered, alienated? Hecould not tell. His ardent and elo- quent eyes, now dim and feverish, in vain sought hers. She looked away always at the gray, misty plain, the wide waste, treeless and sunless, swept with low, driving clouds. ‘‘You knew it always?’ he muttered at length; ‘always, surely ?” MOS. The single word came painfully and with hesitation from her lips. She put her hand on her heart to still its beating. For the first time in all her years she was afraid, and afraid of herself. ‘* Yes,” she said, once more, ‘‘I knew it lately, but I thought you never would speak of it to me. You should have been silent always, always. If I were indeed a religion to you, you would have been so. Men do not speak so of what they honor. AmTI no better than my husband’s mistresses in your eyes ?” She drew herself erect with a sudden anger, and drew the skirt of her gown from. his hands. Then a shiver, as of cold, passed over her, a sob rose in her throat. She stood motionless, her face covered with her hands. He wished he had die a thousand deaths ere he had spoken, He rose to his feet and stood before her. ‘‘ Since the day by the sea that I gathered you the rose, I have loved you: where isthe harm? All these years I have been silent. Had I seen you in peace and in honor, I would have been silent- to my grave. I have been a sinner often, but I would never have sinned against you. I would never have dared to ask you to stoop and hear my sorrow, to soil your hand to soothe my ain. I saw you outraged, injured, forsaken, and your rivals the se creatures that I could buy as well as he if I chose, and yet I said nothing; I waited, hoping your life might pass calmly by . me, ready, if of any defense or any use I could be. What was the harm or the insult in that? You are the golden cup, holy to me; he drinks from the cabaret glasses: can you ask me a man, and not old, and with life in my veins, and not ice, to be patient and mute when I see that, and find you in solitude here?” He spoke with the simplicity and the strength of intense but- restrained emotion. All the passion in him was on fire, but he choked it into silerce and stillness: he would not seem to insult her in her loneliness. comicbooks co == \ ae