Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/60

 Tenderness had awakened in her long before passion. For many a month it was as a devoted sister that she loved him; and only slowly and at intervals did the deeper, hotter springs of life stir in her; beside there was always, on her, like the cold and heavy hand of a dead thing, the memory of what he had loved in Mantua.

To the concentrated and intense nature which so many hours of solitude and so much silent unuttered thought had made even graver and more passionate than it was by instinct, it seemed impossible that a woman he had adored should have passed out of his life because death had taken her. The terrible might and melancholy of that story, which had thrilled on her ear the first night she heard it told, and sunk into her very heart as she had listened, weighed on her still. He might forget; she could not.

That dagger-stroke in Mantua seemed to her to unite him with that dead woman in indissoluble union.

She did not know that tragedies drift out of the memories of men as wrecked ships sink from sight under a rising tide; she did not know that 'violent delights