Oh, why, why did you
come with me? Why did I let you?"
After such words as these, Alessandro would throw himself on the
ground, and for a few moments not even Ramona's voice would
make him look up. It was strange that the gentle girl, unused to
hardship, or to the thought of danger, did net find herself terrified
by these fierce glooms and apprehensions of her lover. But she was
appalled by nothing. Saved from the only thing in life she had
dreaded, sure that Alessandro lived, and that he would not leave
her, she had no fears. This was partly from her inexperience, from
her utter inability to conceive of the things Alessandro's
imagination painted in colors only too true; but it was also largely
due to the inalienable loyalty and quenchless courage of her soul,--
qualities in her nature never yet tested; qualities of which she
hardly knew so much as the name, but which were to bear her
steadfast and buoyant through many sorrowful years.
Before nightfall of this their first day in the wilderness, Alessandro
had prepared for Ramona a bed of finely broken twigs of the
manzanita and ceanothus, both of which grew in abundance all
through the canon.
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