Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/251

 beauty in her which his mind had languidly acknowledged but his pulse had never quickened to before.

This stranger had been here in the summer and had come again!

All at once he realised that here, growing unnoticed by him in the twilight in the heart of the rocks, was a wild flower that men of science would envy him; an orchid of the swamps, an amaryllis of the woods, that they would covet for hothouse and hortus siccus in the cities of the world.

'Why do you go out so long and so often?' he said angrily. 'You are too young, you are too handsome; you cannot wander as the hare does and the polecat from morn to eve.'

She laughed a little.

'I must, or what food should we have? The danger is not for me; it is for you. If any one come down into these tombs you must hide yourself, and you are not careful enough when I am away.'

'Stay, then. Do not go. We can live on bread,'

'I can. You cannot.'

'I would sooner die of hunger than that you should meet with other men and talk