Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/125

 singers to make fair in fame this sad Maremma land, and to string strophes that would echo through two thousand years, telling stories of their sorrows of the sea and of their loves and lives on land. Centuries come and go, and every winter the people sing around their fires, and every summer the fever wastes them and they die, and the living still sing because they still love; but the world does not hear the song. Shelley and Theocritus are dead.

Musa sang as the birds do, as the people do, scarce knowing that she did so, and the clear, tender notes, with all the flute-like melody of extreme youth in them, echoed over the waters, and startled the rock-martins working at their conical houses.

The child was happy without any reasoning or any consciousness that she was so, like any other young animal. The sense of motion, of fresh wind, of wide sea, of being able to go wherever she chose, and guide the boat as she liked, appeased the restlessness which tormented her like a fever when she was in the house of Joconda, or in the church with the others, or wherever, as she said, there were four walls imprisoning her. The other children thought her