Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/116

 To her it seemed for ever wonderful that he looked for her return as the shades of evening fell with longing eyes, that he found any loveliness in her, that he forgot his dead mistress for her sake.

She was nothing in her own sight.

She was proud in some ways, but she was utterly humble in others.

She was but a moorland thing in her own sight, no higher than the loosestrife or the woodspurge was, just fed with sun and dew, and born out of the soil where she took root.

If she were, indeed, fair to see as he and the others said, it was only, like the flowers, by the grace of nature and the smile of heaven. Her character was moulded on too grand lines for any vanity to find place to lurk in it, and that selfishness which is the safeguard and armour of all average women was also absent from her.

It is often said that the strong cannot love the weak, the high-tempered courage cannot cling to the coward; yet it is rather the strong who alone can love the weak, who can have the patience, the pity, the abiding tenderness to bear with feebleness, so unlike itself; it is rather the high courage