Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/210

 borrowed unconsciously for awhile the liveries of chastity; and he spoke no word, he made no gesture, that would have scared from its virginal calm the soul of this lonely creature, who succoured him with so much courage and so much compassion that they awed him with the sense of an eternal, infinite, and overwhelming obligation.

It needs a great nature to bear the weight of a great gratitude.

To a great nature it gives wings that bear it up to heaven; a lower nature feels it always as a clog that impatiently is dragged only so long as force compels.

Which nature was Este's he would not have known himself.

At times, indeed, the weight of his debt to the fellow-creature who had sheltered him came upon him with a shock, and startled him at its vastness. But commonly he thought no more of it than the cuckoo thinks of debt to the tree-sparrow in whose nest he lies so safely whilst April storms shake off the April blossoms.

All she did for him was done so simply, so wholly as a matter of course, that no mute claim on her part, even of look or gesture, ever recalled to him that she owed