Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/160

 It was only the scorch from the blaze of the sun at his zenith, but it was terrible. The very toads were panting, sunk downward in the lowest deeps of the pools. The buffaloes and the boars buried themselves low in beds of canes and cotton-grass; the birds were all still; only the tree-frog shouted in the shrubs, and the snake lay basking and happy on the sand; the wild mares and their foals could scarce drag one hoof after another; but she was insensible to the sun-rays, that darted at her like arrows red-hot, and lapped her with tongues of flame, and lay on all the land around her like a plague.

She thought only of this secret she carried in her brain. Would he whom she loved not read it in her eyes?

She would never tell him.

That fierce tenacity which was in her blood, as it had been in Saturnino's, fastened on to the one resolve and clung to it.

For the time all that was passionate, violent, fierce, selfish, held their sway, and all she thought of was to hold and keep him, as the child in the cruelty of his possession holds the poor bird it loves until it dies strangled in his embrace.