It had never occurred to Marcello that he might have to fight for
anything, and if some one had told him on that spring morning that he
was on the very verge of a desperate struggle for existence against
overwhelming odds, he would have turned his bright eyes wonderingly to
the prophet of evil, asking whence danger could come, and trying to
think what it might be like.

At the first appearance of it he would have been startled into fear,
too, as many a grown man has been before now, when suddenly brought face
to face with an unknown peril, being quite untried: and small shame to
him. He who has been waked from a peaceful sleep and pleasant dreams to
find death at his throat, for the first time in his life, knows the
meaning of that. Samson was a tried warrior when Delilah first roused
him with her cry, "The Philistines are upon thee!"

Marcello was no youthful Samson, yet he was not an unmanly boy, for all
his bringing up. So far as his strength would allow he had been
accustomed to the exercises and sports of men: he could ride fearlessly,
if not untiringly; he was a fair shot; he had hunted wild boar with his
stepfather in the marshy lands by the sea; he had been taught to fence
and was not clumsy with weapons, though he had not yet any great skill.
He had always been told that he was delicate and must be careful, and he
knew that he was not strong; but there was one good sign in that his
weakness irritated him and bred at least the desire for strength,
instead of the poor-spirited indolence that bears bodily infirmity as
something inevitable, and is ready to accept pity if not to ask for it.

The smell of the damp earth was gone, and as the sun shone out the air
was filled with the scent of warm roses and the faintly sweet odour of
wistaria. Marcello heard a light footstep close to him, and met his