Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/82

 It was so pleasant to lie there, at home, with the glow of the fire spreading over all her wet numb limbs, and the sense of his hands on hers, of his voice on her ear.

Her head rested on a log of wood covered with a goatskin; her damp curls began to grow crisp, and the gold in them shone in the light of the blazing wood; her face was pale as marble; her slender feet lay bare and white upon the other goatskins he had spread beneath her; she was more lovely so in her helplessness than she had ever seemed to him in all the plenitude of her strength and health.

He murmured tender and passionate words over her; he kissed her curls and her hands and her feet; it had been those kisses which had awakened her.

Now, as she lay half dreaming, half smiling, only half conscious yet, he drew back from her a little; he was afraid to alarm her; life in her had seemed for a time so still that he had thought her dead. She had had no more motion, no more breath in her, than a broken lily thrown down on the grass.

But Glaucus had only played with this his favourite child; he had not killed her.