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 no more than she knew of the Etruscan Vulcan.

Another year went by, and the girl grew taller and stronger, and had Santa Tarsilla counted young men amidst its population, they would have looked full well and often at that dark yet luminous face that was by old Joconda's side in the morning mist and the troubled sunlight of the dull church at time of mass. Joconda kept her close, and encouraged her to be silent. Joconda was not loquacious like those chatterers of the seaboard, and she always thought that no harm could come from holding your tongue, though much might come from wagging it.

At fifteen, Musa, as she was now oftenest called, and would be called in Santa Tarsilla if she lived in it a century, was a noble-looking and beautiful creature, with pride in her glance, and more still of shyness, with a bearing royal in its calmness and its freedom, and an untamed and sombre spirit in her blood.

When old Andreino saw her at his tiller or from his boat's side looked down at her as she lifted her bronze-hued, loose-curled head, like a young god's, out of the waters,