Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/15

 'It will matter to you also, some day,' said the Sicilian skipper.

'Will you promise to be here on the beach this day four months?' he pursued. 'Come what winds and tides there may, here will I be.'

'Not I,' she answered him; 'if you want to see me, then you may find me. But you will not.'

'I will find you,' he said passionately; 'you have said they call you a sea-bird and the Musoncella.'

But ere he spoke she had taken to flight; going over the moist, red, moss-eaten earth as the wary lapwing skims it when the nets are spread in his sight. He could have followed her, for he was young and fleet, but a sense of awe and of timidity withheld him. He looked after her a little while, then he went back to his good brig.

It made no impression on Musa; her senses were unawakened, like the sting of the bee that lies undeveloped in the alveole; and her emotions were more quickly moved to anger than to pity. She ran on like a young ostrich who hears the negroes after it, and felt no safety till she had plunged once more into the friendly twilight of her home.