Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/167

 She was like one torn in pieces by ravenous beasts that rent her asunder.

The sun was going towards the west, but was still high in the heavens, whose cloudless space looked grey beside the deep and sparkling azure of the sea, when to her ear there came a low faint sound; it was the voice that she loved calling to her, timidly and with caution, from below the nightshade and the acanthus foliage.

He wondered, and was afraid, at her long absence.

The sound pierced her apathy, and roused her, as a child's cry does its mother after birth.

She rose to her feet.

Her bright clear skin was pallid and dull; her throat was dry; her brain was hot, and beating in her skull.

She looked once over the yellowed moors and up to the cloudless skies, as a beast that is hunted to the death will do, seeking for pity, finding none.

She drew her belt close about her loins, as though she went to combat, then plunged without pause into the twilight of the tombs.

Ere he could speak, she cried to him,