Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/192



EANWHILE, for sympathy Musa went elsewhere. She turned to those who had been dead three thousand years if one.

She had never spoken of her discovery; the secret was sacred to her and sweet; she loved the moors and the city of the dead that was beneath them. All the leisure that she had she spent there. With the help of Andreino she had made, at last, for herself a rough little boat out of drift-timbers lying about, and she rowed herself hither and thither in it: it was not very seaworthy, but that had no terrors for her; she could swim like a fish. She visited her Etruscan burial-place with each fast-day that came round, when the crisp snow of December made the marsh ice and the world white,