Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/222

 amaranth snapped off in its full flower and left to wither. To venture forth into the light and air was almost certainly to return to the galleys; to stay on here, though life itself was kept up in him, was to die in all save the actual rotting of the body.

Musa to him was only like a brave boy who had rescued him; he did not feel to her more than the Lucumo (once prince here) might have felt to the faithful slave whose ashes he had placed between his own bones and his dog's. She was perforce out all the day, getting him such food as she could, or such work as she could glean from the moors; cutting the distaff canes to make them into bundles, seeking for edible roots, bringing in wood blown down in the autumn winds, or the dry brake to make a couch for herself, netting or spearing fish for his evening meal, searching for and gathering those medicinal herbs which she relied on as the chief means of making money enough to buy quinine and wine. Unless she went out he must starve, and so perforce she left him in these dark and stormy autumn days alone with his passionate regrets, his almost sullen despair.

If he could but have gone with her