Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/103

 me your secrets that I may sing to him a song that will never tire him.'

For her songs tired him; that she saw. He was always tired, he who could not see the face of the sun, who dared not walk across a rood of turf, who had no range but these narrow stone chambers that he paced with restless feet, as the caged lions pace their den.

He was the world to her; if she had been in the crowds of a city she would have seen but his face amidst the multitudes. In the twilight of the tombs his smile made for her a light more lovely than the morning glory of the skies; she could have lived so through years, through centuries, content.

But he—his caprice crowned, his victory assured—he began once more to weary of the long and empty days, to sigh for the ways of the world and the voices of men, to fret his soul in that dull dejection which had been roused and dissipated for a little time under the eagerness of jealousy, the excitation of failure.

'It is no fault of yours, dear,' he said once wearily, 'you do all you can. But I am a prisoner here. Though you console, you cannot change, my fate. I have