Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/257

 one thought. How would he find her elsewhere? And was not his memory there with every remembered hour of joy? The temptation came to her to go and seek him, but she thrust it away. She said to herself: 'I must not remind him of his debt.'

Nay, though she died of longing to look upon his face she would never do that.

It was afternoon. Though close on autumn the sultriness of summer had not abated there. The air was still thick with mosquitoes. The sails of the boats out at sea hung like painted sails of wood. Some men were killing a half-dead shark; his eyes rolled in horrible futile agony; they were cutting the live flesh off his spine.

Pale shores stretched on either side, pale mountains slid away into heat mists in the distance. Everything was still feverish, pallid, weary with that ghastly weariness of great heat which makes the ice-floe and the north wind seem in desire as paradise; the heat which blanches and enfeebles and fevers and wastes all in one; the heat in which flowers and birds wither and pant, and children droop as the tall stems of the sunflowers do; the heat in which all the beauty goes out of