Moths by Ouida — page 351: what you’re looking at

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

MOTHS. 847 In him, this indifference was no virtue. All women had be- come without charm to him. The dominion of a noble and un- divided love was upon him; that love was nothing but pain; but the pain was sacred to him. His lips would never touch the golden cup, but the memory of it forbade him to drink of any earthly wines of pleasure or of vanity. His love, like all great love, was consecration. ‘‘ He will end in a monastery,” said the neglected Delilahs; and Sergius Zouroff heard them say it. | A somber jealousy began to awaken in him as it had awakened at the sight of the necklace of the moth on the breast of Vere. What right had this singer to be faithful to the memory of his wife while he to his wife was faithless? ‘¢ Pur amant sur terre egare!”’ murmured Jeanne de Sonnaz again, with a little laugh, when she saw Correze passing out of the opera-house alone, and added in the ear of Zouroff, ‘‘How he shames you/ Are you not ashamed?” Zourofi grew sullen and suspicious. He began to hate the sight of the face of Correze, and even that of the letters of his name on the walls of Paris. Itseemed to him that all the world was filled with this nightingale’s voice. As the horses of Correze passed him on the boulevards, as Correze entered the Saint-Ar- - naud or the Mirliton, when he was himself in either club, as the crowds gathered and waited in the streets, and he heard it was to see Correze pass by after some fresh success in his art, then Zouroft began to curse him bitterly. There was a look in the eyes of Correze when they glanced at his that seemed to him to say, with a superb scorn, ‘‘ I am faith- ful to your wife. And you?” This hatred slumbered like a dull and sullen fire in him, but it was a living fire, and the lips of Jeanne de Sonnaz fanned it and kept it alive. With ridicule, with hint, with conjecture, with irony, one way or another she stung him a hundred times a week — with the name of Correze. ‘¢She is in Poland, he is in Paris: what can you pretend there can be between them?” he said to her once, in savage impatience, Then she smiled. ; ‘‘ Distance is favorable to those lovers of the soul. Did I not quote you Sully-Prudhomme’s ‘Purs amants sur terre egares?’ ”’ Once in that spring-time Zouroff wrote one line to his wifes. ‘‘ Tf youare tired of Szarisla, you know on what terms you c return to Paris.” | He received no answer. He was perplexed. It seemed to him impossible that. she could have courage, pas tience, and strength to remain in that solitude. ‘Tt is obstinacy,” he said. ‘‘It is stubborness.” ‘‘Tt is love,” said Jeanne de Sonnaz, with a little smile. Zouroff laughed also, but he chafed. ; — - | (ee) comicbooks “ — > pe ae ee