Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/293

 Este heard without response, his hands all the while shaping the clay; the lids drooped over his pensive eyes.

A confusion of anger, dismay, and jealous apprehension made him hear with disordered mind; he kept thinking only: 'She will go; sooner or later, she will go.'

He had heard enough of Paris to know that it is to all women who have the chance of it an irresistible paradise and perdition; a phosphorescent whirlpool in which all their barques swim giddily and go down, one in a thousand escaping.

For a moment he saw her in his fancy taken there, as a wild forest animal is taken to the light and noise and glitter of the circus. What would not an artist make of that beauty that was at once Greek and Lydian, at once classic and oriental, at once so vivid and so serene? What would she be like, with jewels on her smooth transparent skin where the blood mounted so readily beneath the golden brown, with her great eyes wide opened, astonished at the world? Would he set pearls about her throat, and take her there where all the multitudes of rich and idle life could see