Moths by Ouida — page 350: what you’re looking at

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

845 ' MOTHS Vere never looked at him. All the color had left. her face, her hands were crossed upon her breast above the mark which her husband’s blow had left there: she stood silent. She remembered her husband’s words, ‘‘ All women are alike when tempted.” For the first timein her pure and proud life, temptation came to her, assailing her with insidious force. _ * What do you ask?” she said, abruptly, at last. ‘‘Do you know what you ask? You ask me to be no better a thing than Jeanne de Sonnaz! Go! my life was empiy before; now it is full —full of shame. Itis you who have filled it. Go!” ‘‘These are bitter words——” ‘‘ They are bitter; they are true. What is the use of sophism? You love me; yes; and what is it you would have me do? cheat the world with hiddenintrigue, or brave it with guilty effrontery? gue or the other; what else but one or the other could love be now or us?” Then, with asudden recollection of the only plea that would have power to persuad or force to move him, she added— ‘“To serve me best go back to Paris; let Jeanne de Sonnaz hear you in all your glory there.” He understood. He stood silent, while the large tears stood beneath his droop- ing eyelids. ‘* T would sooner you bade me die.” ‘Tt is so easy to die,” she said, with a passing weary smile. ** Tf—if you love me indeed—go.” ** At once?” She bent her head. He looked at her; he did not touch her; he did not speak to her; and he went, The door of the church closed witha heavy sound behind him. | His footsteps were lost upon the snow. When the old priest entered the building, he found the mis- tress of Szarisla kneeling before the altar, She remained so long motionless that at length the old man was frightened and dared to touch her, She was insensible. Her household thought she had fainted from the cold. CHAPTER XXVIII, TEN days later Correze sang in the midnight mass of Notre Dame. The face of the Duchesse de Sonnaz clouded, * O’est une impasse,” she muttered. . The winter went on its course, and the spring-time came. Correze remained in Paris. He sang, as of old, and his triumphs were many, and envy and detraction could only creep after him daily and dumbly, For the summer he took a little chateau in the old-world village of Marly-le-Roi, and there gathered other artists about him. The world of women found him changed. He had grown cold — and almost stern; _amours he had none; to the seductions that had of old found him so easy a prey he was steeled, | ‘ Gom (al oeYo) KS (Efe)