Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/100

 braced her it seemed to him that he touched an Immortal.

'You are glorious as a young goddess, he had murmured to her once; 'and I—I am but a hunted felon, afraid to meet the light.'

Then she had laid her arms upon his shoulders, and raised her beautiful mouth to his.

'You are my love! my love!' she had answered him; and in the brief whisper there had been such eloquence of passion as he thought no poet's words or musician's melody had ever yet been able to give to sound.

When she took the flowers of the woods and put them before Joconda's coffin, as she never forgot to do, she said always, as she kneeled a moment there:

'Dear friend, where you are you understand; he loves me, and we are happy, and you, you will forgive?'

It seemed to her that the dead must see as God saw, with whom they were.

Her daily life was the same as it had been before. There could be but little remission cf her labours, since nothing but her strength and her effort stood between