Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/104

 read of a bird, a great vulture, who lived in his cage, but his wings grew paralysed and hung helpless. I am like the bird. I am half paralysed. I am scarce a living man.'

Then, when he saw the great tears start into her eyes and her face grow pale, he repented and kissed her, and drew the close-curling bronze of her hair to his breast.

'Nay, I do live, through you. I am an ingrate to lament. Forgive me and forget it!'

But his lament echoed in her heart, and remained in his. It was the one shadow across the sunlit path of perfect joy down which her feet were going, careless of their goal. He was not free; and without freedom the sweetest fruit has a bitter taste, the clearest water has an acrid flavour.

He was not free; and she who had had power for awhile to make him oblivious of bis doom soon lost that power, through no fault of her own, but merely through the seldom-varying laws of reaction that govern the man in his passion as the child with his toy.

For a short space, for a few weeks, a few months, the physical beauty of her and her