Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/58

 give a home amongst his kindred to a child who was all alone on earth. Pity and a chivalrous charity had been at work in him, but he found himself before a young Amazon who would have nothing at his hands, an Atalanta whom no golden apple would tempt.

It was midsummer, and the miasma of the country began, as she had said, to steal the health out of his face and the marrow out of his bones. It was time also for him to be beside the high Biscayan waves on the west coast of France, where he had promised to paint the frescoes of a great gallery in a friend's Breton castle. Thinking, alone, in the hot nights as the sails of the tartane grew silvery under the moon, and the lights of the fishing-boats glimmered in the deep blue of the night, he reluctantly came to the conclusion with a sigh that his greatest, his only possible, kindness was to leave her to herself.

The conviction wounded his conscience and hurt his self-love, of which, however, he had less than most people; but to do otherwise he would needs be harsh and treacherous. He could not bring himself to be either; it seemed to him that she was the last of the