Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/332

 world had taught her all its sorcery, and she had its grace, its skill, its power. She was the Venus Pandemos which in all time has triumphed.

She put her hand upon his shoulder, and laughed a little, noiselessly.

She glanced at the poor grey, dust-stained, travel-tired form that she saw there.

'He is mine,' she said with a smile. 'Was he yours once? Well! why have you let him go?'

He shivered under the hold of the courtesan, but he said nothing. His head drooped; he was ashamed, bitterly ashamed.

He envied that dead carrion which lay in the lower chamber of his palace. He, at least, living, had been a man.

Musa stood mute; her eyes fastened on this beautiful soulless white and golden thing that held him there.

Then all at once she understood.

With one cry she turned and fled.

When he shook off his sorceress, and followed her down his great marble stairs into the darkness of the night, she was gone: lost to him in the wilderness of Rome.

Then perhaps, at last, he loved her.