Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/32

 go with him and live on an island that he calls Sicily,' she said, with a troubled confusion in her thoughts. 'I told him I would never go; that it was folly. He will not come back again.'

'And I thought no eyes ever beheld you!' he cried, with amazed anger. 'I thought you hid unseen in the reeds and the woods like the moor-hen. Are there hunters for you as for her? Is the Maremma one great net? You should not listen. Why do you listen? If you loved me, you would be blind and deaf. That is love; that only. In all the sounds of the earth only to hear one voice'

She looked at him. She did not speak, but in her humid sombre eyes there was such infinite love, passing all power of words, that he in turn was dumb.

His jealous petulance sank to silence, abashed before that mute eloquence of a single glance. The momentary fever of his roused senses was stilled and chilled by the immensity of sacrifice and heroism which that one look recalled to him.

'Ah, forgive me!' he murmured with instant contrition; and emotion which for the time was true and profound brought quick