Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/54

 transparent wonder of its distances, the rose and the gold of its daybreak.

The enervating atmosphere seemed to steal the strength from his sinews like Delilah; the squalor and the sickness in the clustered hovels that were called a town made him weary and depressed; he grew ill, as Musa had told him that he would do; he began angrily to feel that it was of no use to lose his time and his powers only to force on an unwilling ear what was unwelcome, only to try and offer safety and ease to one who scorned the one and could not understand the other.

It seemed to him that it was his duty to compel this lonely child to accept the succour and the asylum whose benefit she could not comprehend; but then duty could only be done by means that would be base. He must resort to that betrayal of her which would seem to her most vile. He must state what he knew of her to the civic authorities of Grosseto; he must set at work against her the machineries of that law against which Saturnino's life had been one long revolt. He must publish to her and every one that story of her birth which the rude tenderness of Joconda had so carefully con-