Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/281

 change the course of volcanic lava as endeavour to sway or alter her, or ever make her regard him as a friend.

He looked at her, and through his mind passed many images and memories to which she had so much likeness. She belonged to the soil; she was one with it; she had its fierce suns and its fierce storms in her nature. Here on this coast, where the Dea Syria had been worshipped with madness and mutilation, where Cybele had been adored with flame and sacrifice, where earlier yet Mantus and Orcus had been propitiated with the palpitating hearts of scarce dead victims, and the tempest and the hurricane had been charged with the dread messages of the gods, here she alone seemed to live, the last echo and shadow of those vanished years, of those forgotten religions, of those changed or perished races.

To him she seemed less a living soul of his own time than some young priestess of Isis, some vision in which Lydia and Latium both lived, eternally young, preserved in the secrecy of these forests, without change, whilst all the rest of earth grew old.

What could he say to her?

How could he hope to alter her?

VOL. II.