Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/25

 in your grave, however old you be when death comes to you. Why should you give yourself to him? Why should you not be honestly loved in open day? Why should you taint yourself with guilt that is not yours? Who will look at you after years passed in the solitude of those caves with a felon? Who will ever believe in your innocence, if innocent you still be? You shut the doors of fate upon yourself. You turn your life of your own will into stone. Nature has made you glorious gifts, and you throw them all away like rotting leaves. Think not that I speak for myself. I am nothing to you. I know I never touch a fibre of your heart or fancy. In all likelihood you will never see my face again. I speak for you; it is for you I sorrow. Better would it be for you to love a man dead in his coffin, than to love one whom at any hour the law may snatch from you and send to fret his years away in the horror of the prisons. When the law takes him it will never yield him up to you; it will never let you rest your eyes on him one moment; it will take him and keep him. Through his misfortune or his guilt, he belongs to the law. He is not even a free