Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/334

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IN MAREMMA.

ness of the land, in the light and lustre of the sunbeams, she saw only one thing, the face of the woman who had robbed her; of the woman who was by his side, with the noiseless laugh on her mouth and the glisten of the old gems at her throat.

That was all she saw.

The few men who met her in the fields and on the moors were frightened at her look, and thought her mad, and hurried from her path.

For six days and nights she wandered, now running, now creeping, now dropping and lying like a stone, now gathering herself up and going onward as a deer does that carries a mortal wound with him through the brake and the stream, over the hill and the heath.

Sometimes she slept.

Sometimes all night she lay with eyes wide open to the stars, staring, wondering where God was.

On the seventh morning she came home.

There were redbreasts singing amidst the myrtle. She went down into the tombs. They were very cold; the ashes of the spent fire were on the stones.

In the ivory skyphos he had always used