Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/300

 stone cast their wide purple shadows over the plain.

And behind him, unseen, followed the tall, slender figure of Musa, with the sun shining on her pale stern face, and in her luminous eyes; as if the God he had outraged so long had bidden a young angel, an angiolin, come down from its watch amidst the moving worlds of heaven to follow in the footsteps of this one bloodstained, brutal, human creature.

He, knowing nothing, pursued his way, whilst the noonday light and the afternoon shades in turn came across his path. Rome was still fifty miles away, if one.

Her greatest fear was lest he should descend to the sea, and take the sea way south; if he did that it would be impossible to follow him or to know whither he went; even if her boat had not been lost, she could not have gone back for it in time to overtake any craft in which he might sail.

But he did not go down towards the shore. He was indeed afraid of the coast, where at every hamlet there was some rural guard, some watchman, or some soldier quartered at one of those Martello towers which dot the shore at intervals.