Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/91

 peace to see no more of a life which, brought into his own, in any way, would be as the wind and the lightning flash of the tempest are in serene pale April skies; yet, think as he would, he could not shake off a sense of cowardice and wrong-doing in leaving undone the task that Joconda had asked her brothers to do. He could not, whether in the historic silence of the old Armorican castle, or in the mirthful and crowded streets of Paris, forget for any length of time that solitary figure as he saw it stand amidst the amber of the coronilla and the broom.

She was so strong, so fearless, so fierce, so lonely, dwelling there amidst the graves of her perished nation; she was beautiful as a hawk is, poised on a bough of oak and looking with bold and brilliant eye down the shaft of the golden sunbeam. She had that grace, that strength, that untamed dignity and daring, which the free things of forest and crag alone possess. The memory of her haunted Sanctis, whose life, all artist though he was, had been chill, orderly, calm, cultured, with little passion in it, and on it the yoke of an early training whose precision could never be wholly abandoned, for strong are the bonds of birth and habit.