Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/131

 turned to him. He was but five-and-twenty years old, and the clinging to life was strong in him. Little by little, as time wore on, the light came back into his great brown eyes; the blood coursed smoothly beneath the delicate olive of his skin; the traces of fatigue and privation effaced themselves; a sense of safety and of tranquillity came on him. In the strange twilight of this home made with the dead the world seemed very far away. Sometimes it seemed to him as if he were himself dead, and buried there, and dreaming in his tomb. Only she was here too, this girl who waited on him as serenely as a boy, who had neither bashfulness nor boldness, who was without fear as she was without knowledge.

'How can I thank you? What can I say to you?' he muttered, as he became awake to the large debt he owed a stranger.

'I would have done the same for a stag or a boar that had been hunted and hurt,' she answered him a little roughly; for she was unused to talk of what she felt, and she was ashamed to be told she had done well.

He was too weak and too drowsy to say more.