Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/77

 home by now. She could scarcely keep in a bitter cry, all useless as was such lament, thinking of him at home watching for her, wondering, doubting perhaps, alone with the bitterness of his own heart all through the weary day.

The sun had long been covered by the dense western clouds and she could not well guess the hour, but it began to grow very dark, and big raindrops began to fall. She could hardly tell her course; all before, behind, on every side, was fog and spray and gloom.

She thought with a continual agony, 'what will he do if I should drown?'

She knew it was very likely that she would drown, alone, out at sea on such an evening in a little open boat. She had seen the cruelties of the sea in all their shapes from her babyhood. She had seen many a drowned man washed up on the sand, swollen, eyeless, half-eaten by the sharks. She knew the great fish that waited down there underneath the waves, to give an added horror to death. She knew all the ghastliness of death in the deep sea. But it was not of herself she thought, but of him. He had no one in all the world but herself;