Moths by Ouida — page 374: what you’re looking at

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

writ MOTHS. never deal with one of his mistresses. Listen. Long ago, when she was a child, I met her on a summer morning; I. loved her then—call it fancy, caprice, poetry, what you will. Her mother gave her, not to me, but to Prince Zouroff. I kept away from her; I would not sing in Russia whilst she was there; I would not approach her in Paris. If I hadseen her m peace, seen her even respected, I would have tried to be content, ! would forever have been silent: instead, I bave seen her insulted in every way that infidelity can insult 2a woman——” ‘‘T know! I know! Spare me:that; go on——’ ‘¢ At last I knew that she was sent into exile; and why? because she would no longer receive Jeanne de Sonnaz.”’ ‘‘It was a madness to refuse to receive Jeanne de Sonnaz. After all, what -did it matter? Women meet their rivals, their foes, every hour, and kiss them. It was madness to refuse.” ‘*It may havebeen. It wasnoble, it was truthful, it was brave, it was befitting the delicacy and the dignity of her nature, For that act, though no onecan deny that she is in the right, she is exiled into a land where life is unendurable, even to yourselves, natives of it; where the year is divided between an endless winter and a short, parching season of heat that itis mockery to call the summer; where the only living creatures that surround her are servants who watch and chronicle her simplest action, and peasants whose God isadream and whose homes are hovels, Did your brother wish for her death, or for her insanity, that he chose Szarisla?” ‘¢ My brother wishes that she should meet Jeanne de Sonnaz. , T am frank with you; be frank with me. Are you the lover of © my brother’s wife? Paris says so.” ‘¢ Madame, that [ love her and shall love no other whilst I live Y do not deny. That I am her lover is a lie, a calumny, a blasphemy, against her.” Madame Nelaguine was silent: she looked at him with search- ing, piercing eyes. ‘‘What did you do, then, at Szarisla?”’ tu ‘‘T went to see her face, to hear her footsteps, to be sure that she lived. I spoke to her; I laid my soul, my honor, all the ars of my life, at her feet, and she rejected them. That is all,” ¢* All?” | She was once more silent; she was a suspicious woman and a 4 cynical, and often false herself, and never credulous; yet she believed him. ‘““You have been unwise, imprudent; you should never have gone there,” she said, suddenly. ‘‘ And she is ill, you say?” ‘‘The priest said so; she looks so; she is weak; she is allalone. I should never have gone there? I should have been a coward indeed if I had not; if I had known her so deeply wronged, and had not at least offered her vengeance——” ‘Her husband is my brother!” ‘It is because he is your brother that I ask the grace of your atience to-day. Madame, remember itis very terrible that at wenty years old an innocent creature, lovely as the morning, ‘Eomichbooks: co