Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/118

 like some grand young angel leaning down over his weakness. Sometimes that ineffable tenderness, so inexhaustible, so divine, which was in her oppressed and daunted him. It seemed to lay a burden on his life, on his conscience.

If she had but been as other women are, captious, changeful, impatient, uncertain, he would not have felt this vague fear of her which seldom left him, blindly subject to him though she was. Her patience was so perfect, her love was so intense, that at times he felt humbled and unworthy before her, and would cry to her angrily, 'Why make a god of me? I have brought you nothing but woe. Chafe me, deride me, upbraid me, then perhaps I shall love you always—men are made so.'

Those bitter words hurt her without her understanding them.

Her tongue could not have framed a rough word to him. The harmless cunning of feminine wiles was as far away from her as the fret of cities was distant from her calm green woodlands and her solitary shores. As soon could a Greek marble of Electra have stooped to coquetry as she.

'If you would but offend me that I