Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/247

 mariner. He did not try to follow her; she had touched his pride when she had called the attempt ungenerous. But he stood motionless, and followed her in thought over the head of the cliff and along that green winter country which stretched between the shore and the tomb of the Lucumo.

Sudden splashes of white rain and the breaking of the clouds massed southward into storm aroused him. Under the heavy downpour from the skies and against the wind he made his tedious way back to desolate Telamone.

Musa ran home as fast as the little felucca fleet was scudding before the wind to the Trojan cape. Este was looking impatiently upward through the shrubs that screened the entrance.

'How long you have been,' he said, with a little accent of reproach that was almost querulous.

'I will make haste now,' she said humbly, and, without waiting to change her skirt, still heavy with sea and rain water, she began at once to light a charcoal fire in the bronze vessel which served her for that purpose.

'I wish you had not to be so constantly away,' said Este, as he watched her at her