Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/106

 his hopeless fate could be forgotten. But his heart beat but dully; he could give but a poor, short-lived, languid gratitude to this hard-won love which merited such endless recompense. Sometimes, when he bowed his head down on Musa's breast, the bitter tears would rise under his closed eyelids, as he would think: 'If only she lived again! if only once more my lips could touch her!' And he knew that she was a dead thing there in Mantua, a thing rotted out of all likeness of itself, in her grave under the marble pile in S. Andrea!