Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/125

 alone, but of the fugitive she harboured there.

She wanted many things for this terrible sickness with which she alone fought; but she could get none of them. She could not bring herself to leave him in his great peril for so long a time as it would take to go to Santa Tarsilla or Telamone; and, even if she had left him, her appearance in those places to which she had been so long lost would have provoked comment, wonder, and possibly pursuit, and, with pursuit, the sight of one for whom to be seen by human eyes would mean a lifetime spent at the galleys. So she had to do as she could with the narrow means within her reach; and whilst the fever lasted the demands of the sick man on her were not great. The water from the nearest spring, a drink she made from the bilberries on the moor, a little broth of herbs thickened with beaten egg, such as she had seen Joconda make for sick people—these were all he wanted, and often more than she could force through his scorched lips, drawn back from his teeth in the convulsions of alternate heat and cold. The terrible nausea of his disease made even the spring water taste bad and bitter to him, though in