Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/281

 him never to see her face again, since he felt that the rebuke and the reproach of those magnificent jewel-like eyes would be very hard to bear, and he remembered how strong her wrist was, and if it should please her to belabour him with one of his own oars he would be as a rush in the grasp of the reed-cutter. And when his conscience pricked him, he felt that he had behaved not nobly; and he was sorry for his conduct; for, after all, the women had hustled him so that he had not been able to get one single coin that had rolled out of the pitcher.

'I might just as well have stood up for her, he thought woefully; 'and after all she might in time have come to think of our little Nandino. I was too quick with her, that is the truth; and then those hags came in between us with their screeching—well, the Saints grant me not to see her face!'

He was terribly afraid lest he should see her. When he sat on the mole smoking his pipe as the shadows lengthened, he scanned anxiously the open sea and the low shore in fear lest he should behold the figure of Musa coming between him and the evening sky.