Moths by Ouida — page 369: what you’re looking at

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

MOTHS. © 2G care cheeks grown thin and wan, and the lustrous eyes that were 30 Weary and so large. “Tam not ill; Iam only weak,” she said, while her voice came with effort. ‘‘Oh, why did you come? It was cruel!” She dropped her hood over her face; he heard her weeping: it was the first time he had ever seen her self-control broken. “Why cruel?” hemurmured. ‘‘ Dear God! how can I bear it} You suffer; you suffer in health as well as in mind. What de you do with your life?—is it to perish here, buried in the snow like a frozen dove’s? He is a brute beast; what need to obey him? what need to be faithful——?”’ | ‘‘tfush! hush! there has been sin enough to expiate, Let me live and die here. Go—go—go!” tes Correze was silent. He gazed at her and loved her as he had never loved her or any other, and yet knew well that she wag right. Nay, he thought almost better eould he bear the endlesg night of perpetual separation than be the tempter to lead that fair and lofty life down into the devious way of hidden intrigue or out into the bald and garish glare of open adultery. ‘‘Oh, my love, my empress, my saint!’ he murmured, as all his soul that yearned for her, gazed from his aching eyes, ‘*Long ago I said cursed be those who bring you the knowledge of evil. Others have brought it you; { will not bring more. 1 love you; yes; what of that? I have sung of love all my days, and I have sworn it to many, and I have been its slave often, too often; but my love for you is as unlike those passions as you are unlike the world. Yet you ask me to leave you here in the darkness of these ghastly winters, in the midst of an alien peo- ple that curse the name you bear, alone amidst every peril, sur- rounded by traitors and spies? Ask me any thing; not that!” ‘*Tt must be that,” she said: her voice was below her breath, but it was firm. ‘*No, no! not that, not that!” he cried, passionately; *‘any other thing; not that! Let me stay where I see the roof that shelters you. Let me stay where I breathe the same air as you breathe. Let me stay where, froma, distance in the forests, Ican watch your horses go by and see the golden gleam of your hair — ,on the mists. I will perish to the world, I will be dead to men, I will come and live here as a hunter or a wood-cutter, as a tiller of the fields, or what you will; but let me live where I know all . that befalls you, where I can be beside you if you need me, where ‘I can kiss the wind as it blows, because in its course it touched your cheek——” In all the strength of his passion, in all the melody of his voice, the eloquence that was as natural to him as song to a bird poured itself out in that prayer. Only to dwell near her—never to touch her hand, never to meet her eyes, but to be near her where she dwelt, in this land of frost, of silence, of darkness, of danger, of sorrow—that was all he asked. And all the tender- ness that was in her, all the youth, all the womanhood, all the need of sympathy and affection that were in her, longed to grant his prayer. To have him remain witiin cali, to feel that in that dark, lon& — S (E(@ comicbhoo hy