Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/257

 and again he watched her with eyes that saw her as though they rested on her for the first time.

It seemed to him that he had been blind. He saw her now as Sanctis saw her;—a creature half divine from strength and innocence united, and with all the fragrance of the woods and all the freshness of the dawn and of the dew about her, and with the mystery of the forest night and the silence of sleeping nature part of her as they were of the nymphs, on whom no mortal looked without madness befalling him, or death.

Disease and weakness and the carking pain of continual apprehension had kept him dull, sightless, half dead; now he was roused and saw, and his dead love drifted away from him and went to join the many ghosts that walk at midnight down the dim ways of Mantua, once the Glorious.

Yet still he knew that he had loved his lady there, as he would not have strength or faith in him ever to love again.