Othmar

by Ouida

'I thank you for your assurance of it!'

The poor child in her ignorance had spoken the very words which could most fatally offend and arouse the dignity and the passion of her hearer. To be assured of her husband's love by the subject of her husband's illicit amours! Even the ironical patience and the contemptuous tolerance of her habitual temper could not remain in silence under such an outrage to her position and her dignity as this.

With a gesture as though sweeping away some unclean things, she motioned Damaris away.

'Leave my presence; leave my house,' she said with an intense rage, only controlled by pride still greater than itself. 'How dare you come where I and my children dwell? Go—go at once, or I will disgrace you before my people.'

But Damaris, whose dread of her had been so great, did not shrink or quail before her.

'You cannot disgrace me for I have done no wrong,' she said in desperation. 'I am nothing to him—nothing, nothing, except a thing he pities. Why should you think that I am? Are not you far above me? have not men loved you always and died for you? do not you know that he himself is sick of heart because you care so little? You will not believe. Oh, God, what shall I say to you! Madame, it is for this only that I came. I wanted to tell you that my heart will break if, through me, any pain comes to him; you think things which are not true, and which would offend him bitterly if he knew them; and he has spoken to me of you as the only woman whom he could ever care for. Why are you angered that I say so? He thinks that you do not care, he thinks that you are weary of him, he thinks that he has no power to please you any more. And I said to myself that perhaps you did not know this, that perhaps you would care if you did know, that perhaps you would put some warmth in his heart, give him some kinder words. I say it ill, but this is what I want to say. He thinks you do not care.'

Her hearer listened with the scornful rage of her soul held in check for an instant by her own knowledge of the likeness in the words thus spoken to the reproach, which Othmar himself had cast against her. In her innermost soul she acknowledged, that if Othmar loved this creature, he was not the mere sensualist she had thought; she recognised the spirituality and the nobility in the beauty and the youth of her disdained visitant; she acknowledged that a man might well lose his wisdom and break his faith for such a face as this; and would have for his madness some excuse of higher kind than would lie in the mere temptation of the senses. The highest quality in her own temperament had always been her candour in her acceptance of truths which were unwelcome to her. This truth was loathsome to her; but it was a truth, and she confessed it as such to her own mind. Yet, even whilst she did so, it pierced the very centre of her soul, and filled her with a new and intolerable pain.

Her insight into the minds of others also told her that this child's mind was honest, innocent, and candid, and though she would not believe what her own penetration said, she could not wholly resist its influence, she could not wholly continue to doubt the good faith of the speaker, even whilst her anger remained unabated at the daring and familiarity of such a scene as this.

Damaris took the brief instant of silence for consent, and sustained and nerved by the pure unselfishness of her romantic purpose, she persevered in her supplication.