Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/101

 not seem to her anything very strange; the knife was a common cure of faithlessness in Maremma.

'She was false?' she added.

'Not false to me. Nor slain by me. God in heaven hears me! Never.'

'Very well. I believe,' she said simply. 'You can tell me more when you will. Now you are unwell—tired and feverish. I will make you a bed of leaves—there is nothing else—in the further chamber, and you had best go to it.'

'Can you sleep amongst these tombs?' he cried, and glanced around the sepulchres with awe.

'The dead do not hurt us,' said Musa, with a grave tenderness. 'They have but gone before where soon we go.'

The young man shuddered a little. Life had been glorious to him, and was still sweet and precious.

It needs a pure soul to love the dead.

She left him, and made a bed of moss and leaves in the innermost chamber of the tombs; she filled one of the black vases with the thin wine of Joconda's store, and put it