Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/223

 and laboured beside her, he would have regained strength and tone.

The cumulus clouds hurrying in vast masses before the west wind; the often angry sea lashed by the north blasts into a smoking field of foam and mist in which the barques were lost as caravans of the desert are lost in the simoom; the beauty of the green, wet, shining earth, with pool and estuary brimming from the copious rains, and thronged with the flocks of arctic birds; the glory of shadow and colour, and sunbeams glowing through the steam of rain, and dark hillsides swept by the mists and echoing back the thunder,—all these, which to her were so beautiful, might have taken some hold also upon his mind and freed him from the brooding dread and desire which consumed him like a disease of vital parts.

But the outer air could never touch him save at rare short times when, fearfully, he stole to the entrance and looked up at the brambles and branches crossing one another, and envied the brown wings of the pilgrim-falcon wheeling against the wind, the silver-grey triangle of the storks travelling across the sky.