Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/93

 alone sets before the baffled brain the cruel problem: why are we?

Musa, as she was now oftenest called, was absolutely ignorant. But ignorance is not always stupidity; and she was full of a restless, though dormant, intelligence which was always groping about blindly for knowledge. Of the arts she knew nothing, not so much as their names, but she had an instinct towards the love of them; the lore of books was unknown to her, but she caught eagerly at all fragments of legend and tradition that came to her from the mouths of the old men and women around her; that earth and sky were lovely no one had ever told her, but their beauty was full of vague delight to her. 'A strange child,' said the people of Santa Tarsilla always, because she would sit for hours quite still, with her dreamy eyes fastened on the stars of a summer night or the sea of an autumn day.

Once a fisher-lad, thinking to please her, had given her a branch of coral. Musa had taken it in silence. 'You can sell it,' said another girl of her age. 'It is a brave piece and of rare colour'. 'When you grow bigger, and go in with the mule to the town,'