Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/12

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4
IN MAREMMA.

the mere thought of feeling the winds of heaven upon him and beholding the width of the sea before his eyes.

Then in another moment that rapture passed, to be succeeded by the memory that he who offered him this possibility of escape was a stranger and an enemy; an enemy because a lover of Musa; one from whose hands he could not and would not take a benefit. A darker suspicion also came upon him. Was not this only the northerner's scheme to sever him and her? Was it not prompted by jealousy rather than by generosity?

He stood silent, with irresolute thoughts chasing each other in tumult through his mind.

He felt that he ought to leave her, to take away from her the burden of his useless existence, to lighten her of the weight and the peril of his concealment there; and yet all the manhood and nobility of descent that were in him told him that it would be but a greater meanness to use the money and the assistance of a man who loved her, and buy his own liberty by the tacit surrender and barter of herself.

The baser motive which Sanctis had