Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/274

 place alive. You are a man and strong; but you are unarmed, and I can kill you.'

She kept her eyes fixed on him, and her hand clenched on the stiletto. She had no fear, nor any sense of sin; all conscience and all judgment was drowned in the flood of one passionate instinct—to save Este.

For herself she would not have so spoken. But for him she was ready to do the thing she threatened. Why would this meddler come unasked and undesired, and thrust himself before her in these green glades that were all her own? She turned on him as the boar turns on his pursuers.

He did not move. For a moment he thought of wresting the knife from her; then he knew her strength and her tenacity; the manhood in him recoiled from a struggle with a woman who was scarce more than a child.

'I think you would kill me if you wished to do it,' he said gently, and with the sadness that he felt. 'I am stronger than you, but you are like the lightning of the skies; you would find your way to cut the cord of my life somehow. But I am not an utter coward, my dear; and I cannot promise or swear you anything under a