Moths by Ouida — page 304: what you’re looking at

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

800 MOTHS. that even his modes of life and all his base habits could not utter- ly destroy; and that latent manliness made him yield asullen re< spect to the courageousness amd unselfishness of the woman who was his wife and his princess before the world, but in fact had been the victim of his tyrannies and the martyr of his lusts. ’ There were times when he would have liked to say to her, “Forgive me, and pray for me.” But his pride witheld him, and his cynical temper made him sneer at himself. He dreaded ridi- cule. It was the only dread that was on him. He could not en- dure that his world should laugh: so, uniting more display and efirontery than ever, he paraded his vices before that world and all the while hated the panderers to them and the associates of them. He thought thai if he lived more decently the whole of Europe would make a mock of it and say that he had been re< formed by the rebukes of Correze. So he showed himself abroad with the verres epais du cabaret brutal, tuough they grew loath- some to him, and revenged himself on them by crushing their coarse frail worthlessness with savage harshness. Vere could not tell the strange sort of remorse which moved him. She saw herself daily and hourly insulted, and bore it as she had done before. . So long as he asked no public degradation of herseif, like that which he had commanded on the Promenade des Anglais, she was passive and content, with that joyless and mournful contentment which is merely the absence of greater evils. Although they met only in society, there was a sort of timidity ‘2 the manner of Sergius Zcuroff to his wife, a gentleness and a homage in his tone, when he addressed her. Vere, who shrank trom him rather more than less, did not perceive it, but all others did. ‘* Wili Zouroff end with being in love with his wife?” his friends said, with a laugh. The Duchesse Jeanne heard it said “on all sides of her. ‘‘ Will he be a good husband, after all?” she thought, angrily; and her vanity rose in alarm, like the quills of the bruised porcupine. She attempted a jest or two with him, but they fell flat; there came an anxious sparkle in his gloomy eyes that warned her of such witticisms. She was perplexed and irritated. ‘After all, it will be very diverting if you should end as le mart amoureux?” she could not resist saying at hazard one day. Zouroff looked round, and his face was very grave. “Let me alone. I can be dangerous: you know that, No, i am not in love with my wife: one is not in love with marble, however heautiful the lines of it. ButI respect her. It is very odd for me to feel respect for any woman. It isnew to me,” *‘ It is a very creditable emotion,” said the duchess, with a lite tle sneer. ‘‘ But it is. rather a dull sentiment, is it not?” “Perhaps,” said Zouroff, gloomily. ; A sort of uneasiness and anxiety was upon him. Something of the feeling that had touched him for the child Vere at Felic- ite moved him once more before his wife; not passion in any way, but more nearly tenderness than it had ever been in his nature to feelfor any living thing. He-had always thought that he had bought her as he had bought the others, only par le z : = # ‘4 . r ‘ . “comicbooks.co ™,