Moths by Ouida — page 370: what you’re looking at

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

866 | MOTHS. wintry desert his heart was beating and his courage was watching near her, to think that when the chill stars shone out of the midnight clouds they would shine on ‘some lonely forest cabin where this one creature who loved her would be living in obscurity for her sake—this was so sweet a thought she dared not look at it, lest her force should fail her. She gathered all her strength. She remembered all that his life - was to him—so gay, so great, so full of love, and honor, and triumph; would she be so weak, so wicked, in her selfishness, as to take him from the world for her, to be his living grave, to make him bankrupt in genius, in art, in fame? She thrust the temptation from her as though it were a coiling snake. “You mean the thing you say,’ she murmured, faintly. “Ves, and I am grateful, but all that can never be. All you can do for me is—to leave me.” ‘How can I leave you—leave you to die alone? What need —-what use is there in such a waste of life? No! what you bid me do, I do. I will keep the word I gave you; if you tell me to go, I go; but, for the pity of Heaven, think first what it is you ask; think a little of what I suffer.” . ; “Have I not thought?” She put her hands out feebly toward him. “Tf you love me, indeed, leave me; there is sin enough, shame enough; spare me more. If indeed you love me, be my good angel—not my tempter!” He was pierced to the heart; ‘the, the lover of Somany women, knew well that. moment in the lives of all women who love, and are loved, when they sink in a trance of ecstasy and pain, and yield without scarce knowing that they yield, and are as easily drawn downward to their doom as a boat into the whirl- pool. He saw that this moment had come to her, as it comes to every woman into whose life has entered love. He saw that he might be the master of her fate and her. For an instant the temptation seized him, like a flame that wrapped him in its fire from head to foot. But the appeal to his strength and to his pity called to him from out that mist and heat of passion and desire. All that was generous, that was chivalrous, that was heroic, in him, answered to the ery. All at once it seemed to him base—base, with the lowest sort of cowardice—to try and drag the pure and lofty spirit to earth, to try and make her one with the women she abhored. He took her hands, and pressed them close against his aching heart. “Better angels than I should be with you,” he murmured; ‘but at least I will try and save you from devils. _No man’s love is fit for you. I will go, and I will never return. He stooped, and with tremulous lips touched her hands; then once more he left her, and went away over the frozen CHAPTER XXX, WITHOUT pause Correze traveled straight to Paris. He reached there late, and had barely time to dress and pass on to the stage. snow. \ comicbooks.co