Moths by Ouida — page 186: what you’re looking at

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

182 | MOTHS. birds were singing as though it were the heart of the provinces. He rode fast and recklessly; the air was clear and fresh with a west wind stirring in it; it refreshod him more than sleep. As he returned, two hours later, he saw her walking in one of the allees des pictons; she was in black, with some old white laces about her throat; before her were her dogs, and behind her was a Russian servant. He checked his horse in the ride adjacent, and waited for her to pass by him. | She did pass, bowed without looking at him, and went onward — between the stems of the leafless trees. Then he thought to himself that she had understood, but he doubted that she ever would forgive. | When she was quite out of sight, he dismounted, gathered a ae violet in the grass where she had passed him, and rode ome. ‘‘She understood a little,” he thought, ‘‘ enough to alarm, enough to offend her. She is too far above us, all to understand more. Even life spent by the side of that brute has not tainted her. They are right to call her the ice-flower. She dwells apart in higher air than we ever breathe.” And his heart sank, and his life seemed very empty. He loved a woman who was nothing to him, who could be nothing to him, and who, even if ever she loved him, he would no more drag down to the low level of base frailties than he would spit upon the cross his fathers worshiped. The next night was the last of his engagement at the Grand Opera. It was a night of such homage and triumph as even he had hardly ever known. But to him it was blank; the box that was Prince Zouroft’s was empty. He left Paris at daybreak. Vere did indeed, but imperfectly, understand. As the song had reached her ear a sudden flood of joy came to her with it; it had been to her as if the heavens had opened; she had for one moment realized all that her life might have been, and she saw that he would have loved her. | When she reached the solitude of her chamber at home, she reproached herself; she seemed to herself to have sinned, and it seemed to her a supreme vanity to have dreamed of a personal message in the evening song of an eloquent singer. Did he not sing every night of love—every night that the public applauded the sorcery of his matchless music? That he might have loved her she did believe. There was a look in his regard that told her so whenever his eyes met hers across the opera-house, or in the crowds of the streets or of society. Butof more she did not, would not, think. ' Perhaps some memory of that one summer morning haunted him, as it haunted her, with the sad vision of a sweetness that might have been in life and never would be now; perhaps a vague regret was really with him. So much she thought, but nothing more. The world she fived in had taught her nothing of its vanities, of its laxities, of its intrignes. She kept the heart of her girl hood, She was still of the old fashion, and a faithless wife was | comicbooks:.co a +