Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida'.djvu/92

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84
IDALIA

—then, at his full speed, obeyed her, and went down the ravine; she had sent from her her sole defender, while, for aught she knew, the murderers of the man she sought to save might return to the scene of their outrage, and deal with her as they had dealt with him. But cowardice was scarcely more in her blood than in his to whose succour she had come with the light of the morning, and whose face was turned upward white and rigid, in mute appeal, in voiceless witness, stern, as one who has fallen in fierce contest, but calm as though he lay in the tranquillity of sleep. She gazed at him thus, till hot tears gathered in her eyes, and fell upon his forehead; he was a stranger, and not of her land; she knew not how his death had been dealt, nor in what cause he had fallen, whence he came, nor what his life had been; but his face touched to the heart all of pity there was in her, where he lay blind and unconscious in the glory of the sun, though many had said that pity was a thing unknown to her. The falling of her tears upon his brow, or the touch of her hand as it swept hack the hair from his temples, and fanned his temples with a fragrant bough of pine to freshen the sultry heat of the noon-day, awoke him to some returning life; a heavy sigh heaved his chest, he stirred wearily, and his lips