Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/111

 the sea-shore did, winding to the south, till it was lost in soft suffused light: she seemed to see them always. All she asked of fate was to be for ever together thus, till age or death should find them, and lay them gently down, folded in each other's arms, still in the place of their refuge where men would never behold them, but only the wandering wind would sometimes bring the flowers' message to them, and sometimes a ray of the sun would come and kiss them where they slumbered.

She could not divine the intolerable impatience that tormented him, the unutterable nausea of life that at times over came him, so that even she only seemed to him a part of the burden of his days, a portion of the weariness that weighed him down.

He to her was as the daybreak, as the morning, as the smile of the earth in the spring-time, as the rainbow that breaks through the darkness, as the star that guides the mariner into harbour; but to him she was at best but what the humble flower growing in the stones at his feet was to the prisoner. Above her, behind her, beyond her, for ever between him and her,