Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/57

 master. Receiving no word, no sign, no glance, she took her billhook from its corner and a coil of cord, and went out into the air to go into the thickets and cut heath and broom for firing.

'Which of your lovers waits for you on the moors today?' he cried to her with bitterness and irritation.

'Lovers I have none,' she said, as she paused in the entrance-place and looked back at him. 'You I love with all my soul—but you do not understand.'

'Nor you,' he said with wrath. 'You think a living man can be loved as you love a swathed mummy in her coffin. You have lived in these stone graves till you are as cold as they. You think the blood in one's veins 1s water'

A sigh quivered all through her; the hot blush came on her face again, half in shame and half in anger.

Did he call her cold—she in whose veins the blood was lava?

Cold! Who would do for him what she would do? who would give her life for him as she would give it, fighting for him as the stork and the eagle fight for their nest in the air?