Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/145

 sigh of Aphrodite herself—to Este, the tomb and the galleys were, alike, a yawning void, in which he would sink and perish. The dread of them—a natural dread like that of the Greeks of old—weighed on him and made his sight blind, his ears deaf, his soul insensible.

Scarcely cared he whether it were a youth or a maiden who waited on him with those tall slender limbs, those short curling locks, those grand pitiful eyes.

To get out, to get away, to flee hard and fast over plain and sea, and put all the width of the earth between him and his prison—that was his one thirst, his one dream, his one craze,

He thought only of escape; meanwhile she thought only of him. She was like the maidens of old to whom a god has descended.

For herself she had had no fear; but now fear filled all her days with a timidity alien to her temper, that made every rustle of a fox amidst the withered canes, every call of a heron across the marshes, terrible.