Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/230

 in after days that it was this sight of the sea which alone kept her alive in those terrible weeks. She could see a hand's-breadth of its blue jewel-like surface leaping, and seeming to laugh, and every now and then a felucca sail would sweep across the narrow field of her vision, or the wing of a gull would flit by, and these familiar things kept sense in her, and saved her from insanity.

Presently they put with her a prostitute; a woman abandoned and loathsome, who was there on a charge of having murdered a youth in a brawl. She was a creature of foul and filthy tongue, and she tried her uttermost to hurt what she saw was a pure soul; but Musa shut her ears and her lips, and looked at the sea; and the obscenity passed by her without harming her. She was beyond that woman's reach.

This great love which absorbed her was like an ivory wall built up between the world and her.

All the while, day and might, she was thinking—if he should go back? if he should go back and find the tomb empty, and her place vacant? Would he think her faithless? would he think she had tired so soon?