Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/132

 A great catastrophe had shaken all his previous life to pieces, and plunged it into utter darkness. It seemed to him as if he had awakened in some other planet than the familiar earth.

But he was too feeble to reflect long or to ask more. She made him think of those immortals of whom he had read in Greek and Latin and in marbles; they who moved through earth compassionate, yet aloof from love. As she stood before him in the gloom, clothed in her tunic of white wool, and with the birds of night about her, he thought of Persephone, of Nausicaa, of the nymphs looking on whom a man grew mad—of all old-world tales of beings who were on earth, not of it.

Yet they were humble cares she had for him. She made his fire, she made his bread, she made his soup; she wove linen for him; she sought far and wide for roots and berries and mushrooms such as he could eat. Sometimes she went down to the sea and netted fish for him; at night, by the solitary lamp, she spun and sewed diligently to replace the garments of his prison that he wore.

She did the simplest and the humblest