Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/273

 angry child into a pythoness, a lioness, a very incarnation of every shape of rage that the earth has ever seen upon it. She snatched from her girdle her long two-edged knife; she cast down her brambles and branches from her head; she leaped to within an inch of him and flashed the steel before his eyes. All the savage blood of the Mastarna of Saturnia leaped up in her, like a naphtha flame from the soil.

'Unless you swear to me that you will never breathe a word of my name or of my dwelling, I will kill you where you stand,' she said, as her eyes flashed their sombre fires into his; and her voice was not loud, but low and deep, like the lioness's voice of menace. Her whole frame seemed alive with rage, as a tree, lightning-struck, is alive with the electric fluid; but it was a rage that would strike as it threatened, not a rage that would die of its own violence.

So intense a surprise seized him that he for the moment could say nothing, and did not move. They gazed into each other's faces.

'Will you swear it?' she said, her voice still low, but as fierce as a snake's hissing, 'If you will not, you shall not leave this