Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/139

 said bitterly. 'He said to me—"a fawn's throat is soon slit.

'That was only because he has been a bad man, and cruel all his years, and his knife always ready. He knew well that you would not hurt me.'

'Have I not hurt you? Heaven pardon me!' he murmured, and he kissed her.

Sometimes he seemed in his own sight what men would have called him—a base coward.

'You hurt me when I think you wish yourself away,' she said timidly under her breath; and he said to her in answer:

'Nay, not away from you, but free to go out into the light, free to feel the wind on my face, and hear the stir of the world once more. Ah, dear! if they had opened his cage door for that vulture that I told you of, I think he would have found strength, even in his paralysed wings, to rise and go.'

'Perhaps,' she said simply, and said no more.

But that night, in her sleep, she sobbed bitterly, and she dreamed that she watched a flock of flamingoes, as she had watched one many a time, going westward, rose-red against the blue sky, and she