Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/164



HE sat in the hot air and felt neither heat nor fatigue, though she had walked nigh twenty miles since daybreak. An adder crawled by her under the dry grass, and she saw it not. She was struggling with herself, with all her ignorance, her strong instincts, her absorbing passions, her unutterable love for this the only living thing she cared for out of all the universe.

Had he been left to her, all the nations of the earth might have perished in droves like oxen that die of pest and drought, and she would have looked on indifferent.

She sat here, in the silence and the sultriness of the day, like a statue of bronze set upon the dry and cracking ground.