Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/267

 ling made for a goatherd, and deserted by him when the heats had come.

She was feeble now; her glorious perfection of health and strength had gone from her, and the symmetrical limbs that had never known ache or pain were now languid, and felt broken as she dragged them over the great silent moorlands.

But the hope of her return sustained her as it sustains the beaten panting fox, or the stockdove with shot in its little aching body that yet flies on to die, if it can, in its own familiar place.

Her one thought, her one terror, was, if he should have been there, if he should have found her absent, would he think her so soon faithless and tired? Would he have gone away in anger and doubt?

That thought of him, and the longing in her to be at home once more, to be by her own hearth and within the walls that held her memories of him, kept up her fainting spirit, kept erect her trembling limbs.

With unutterable joy she at last entered on the wild woodlands, where a rising of the soil let her look away eastward over the sea of foliage, and search with yearning eyes for the landmarks by which she would know