aldo went every where to hasten the rout; and still had
to fight and slay on. Armida beheld him coming where she sat in the midst
of her knights; he saw her, and blushed a little: she turned as cold as
ice, then as hot as fire. Her anger was doubled by the slaughter of her
friends; and with her woman's hand she sent an arrow out of her bow,
hoping, and yet even then hoping not, to slay or to hurt him. The arrow
fell on him like a toy; and he turned aside, as she thought, in disdain.
Yet he disdained not to smite down her champions. Hope of every kind
deserted her. Resolving to die by herself in some lonely spot, she got
down from her chariot to horse, and fled out of the field. Rinaldo saw
the flight; and though one of the knights that remained to her struck him
such a blow as made him reel in his saddle, he despatched the man with
another like a thunderbolt, and then galloped after the fugitive.

Armida was in the act of putting a shaft to her bosom, in order to die
upon it, when her arm was arrested by a mighty grasp; and turning round,
she beheld with a shriek the beloved face of him who had caused the ruin
of her and hers. She closed her disdainful eyes and fainted away. Rinaldo
supported her; he loosened her girdle; he bathed her bosom and her
eyelids with his tears. Coming at length to herself, still she would
not look at him. She would fain not have been supported by him. She
endeavoured with her weak fingers to undo the strong ones that clasped
her; she wept bitterly, and at length spoke, but still without meeting
his eyes.

"And may I not," she said, "even die? must I be followed and tormented
even in my last moments? What mockery of a wish to save me is this! I
will not be watched; I believe not a syllable of such pity; and I will
not be made a sight of, and a by-word. I ask my life of thee no longer;
I want nothing but death; and death itself I would not receive at such
hands; they would render even that felicity hateful. Leave me. I could
not be hindered long from putting an end to my miseries, whatever
barbarous restraint might be put upon me. There are a thousand ways of
dying; and I will be neither hindered, nor deceived, nor flattered--oh,
never more!"

Weeping she spoke--weeping always, and sobbing, and full of wilful words.
But yet she felt all the time the arm that was round her.

"Armida," said Rinaldo, in a voice full of tenderness, "be calm, and know
me for what I am--no enemy, no conqueror, not