Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/73

 enclosed her in its starry veil, and shut her from his view.

'The virgin's bower,' he thought, as the peasant's name for the parasite of the woods came on his mind. 'May she be safe in it!'

But his fears were with her though his anger would fain have extinguished them.

'She is only a savage wild creature as the dondola of her moorland is,' he said to himself, as he walked through the blossoming ling which the slanting sun-rays made into 'a path of gold.' But he could not persuade himself that she was only this; he could not banish from his sight the face that was fit for the young Cleopatra's; he could not forgive himself for having missed the way to fulfil Joconda's wishes. Yet his conscience was blameless.

The fault was not his.

She was a pomegranate-flower blooming in the wilderness; a paradise-bird captive in a cellar. He felt a fool, and guilty, because he had been unable to gather the flower, and too weak to persuade the bird that liberty and light were without.

After him Musa did not look back.

She descended into her shadowy home and called the old dog to her.