Page:Maurice Hewlett--Little novels of Italy.djvu/242

230 Selvaggia's hair was brown, gold-shot of its own virtue. In and out of it was threaded a fine gold chain; behind, it was of course plaited in a long twist, plaited and bound up in cloth of gold till it looked as hard as a bull's tail. Her dress was all of formal brocade, green and white, to her feet. It was cut square at the neck; and from that square her throat, dazzlingly white, shot up as stiff as a stalk which should find in her face its delicate flower. She was not very rosy, save about the lips; her eyes were grey, inclined to be green, the lashes black. As for her shape, sumptuous as her dress was, stiff and straight and severe, I ask you to believe that she had grace to fill it with life, to move at ease in it, to press it into soft and rounded lines. Her linked companions also were beauties of their day—that sleek and sleepy Nicoletta, that ruddy Guglielmotta; but they seemed to cower in their rigid clothes, and they were as nothing to Cino.

The lane was so narrow that only three could pass abreast; it was abreast these three were coming, as Cino saw. On a sudden his heart began to knock at his ribs; that was when the light fell aslant upon the maid. He could no more have taken his eyes off Selvaggia than he could have climbed up the dusty wall to avoid her. Lo, here is one stronger than I! At the next moment the three young rogues were about him, their knitted hands a fence,—but the eyes of Selvaggia! Terrible twin-fires, he thought, such as men light in the desert to scare the beasts away while they sleep, or (as he afterwards improved it for his need) like the flaming sword of the Archangel,