Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/115

 irritation, more despondency at his fate to him.

This long hot summer, with its damp air, its bursts of tropical rain, its sultry perilous vapours, seemed like one tedious day to him; yet a day that would never end, but was reeled off from the wheel of destiny in horrible, perpetual, unchanging sequence.

All the thrones of the world might have been offered her, and all the anathema of all its various religions hurled at her, and she would never have left his side in that lonely chamber of shadows. But he?

The greatness of her nature escaped him. The beauty of her sacrifice did not touch him to more than a passing emotion.

He did not see that here was a soul on which his own might rise to any heights; that here was a love which could become to him as the 'white genius' of the Etrurian myth.

He failed to comprehend the magnitude of her gifts to him. The reason was simple: he never really loved her.

Happily for her, she was not learned enough in passion's vagaries to perceive that.