which spoke, too, of the racial instinct which was theirs.
"I love it," she murmured, breathing through her teeth in a strangely sensuous manner, and the marquis felt a tearing pang of jealousy—of the flesh, not of the mind—as if this harsh, hot land of Corsica were a man, with a man s feelings.
For love of his wife he remained. For love of her he tried to identify himself with the land.
He took part in local politics, he gave largely to local charities, endowing a hospital, a school for orphans, a public library, building an ornamental fountain in the market-place of the little village—and he felt that though the people spoke thanks, they did not give thanks.
They doffed their caps and bowed; they stepped to one side when they met him in the narrow streets; they said "bonjour, monsieur le marquis" with their metallic southern voices; they brought him fruit and flowers on the days of the great saints.
Yet they made him feel that he was a Frenchman, a foreigner, an intruder, while they were Corsicans, sufficient to themselves, doing and feeling nothing in quite the same way as other people, and
