Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/47

 instinctive revolt against its own subjugation.

'You do not love me!' was all he would say, and even whilst he cast the reproach against her he knew very well that not thus would any of his light-won loves have served him and defended him; not thus would Donna Aloysia have dwelt content in the twilight of the sepulchres and the gloom of his own fate. He was thankless, unjust, exacting, tyrannical, as love oftenest 1s; and his love was but the mere froth and fume of jealousy and sensual covetousness, and so lacked all higher aim or clement, lacked all palliative of tenderness.

All the purer gold of his nature had been burned out of him under the inactivity and torment he had suffered, and little but the dross remained. Men in the Thebaïd might gather strength and purity and spirituality from the desert-silence; but to him the endless lonely hours, the dull heavy hopelessness, the carking sense of perpetual danger, were on his temper like a block of stone upon turf; all grew barren under the continuous pressure and the exclusion of all light and dew.

And in this misery of his there was only