Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/178

 'Hush! you are cruel,' he said angrily. 'Do you think I did not remember? I would give my liberty up now—now—to make her living once more!'

There was the vibration of true passion in the words: the woman dead in Mantua was dearer to him still than she who had given him a love surpassing human love in its sacrifice and its effort.

She was silent.

He stood silent also; unconscious that he was cruel, as men mostly are.

They rarely wound because they wish to wound, but because they do not remember, do not understand, do not measure the pain with which women love them.

'Might I go and read that, think you?' he said suddenly. 'It may be best to lose no moment of time in showing them I live—some impostor may cozen them—if you will not feel me unkind. Oh, heavens! if you knew—if you only knew—how I long to walk out amongst men in the bright broad day once more!'

'Go; go at once,' she said to him, still with that strange faintness and constraint in her voice, which he did not notice.