Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/220

 the dyer-oaks and the downy-oaks grew yellow.

His shallow studies were enough to seem to her ignorance a very ocean of knowledge, in whose depths were wondrous pearls.

When he spoke to her of all these unknown things, her mind, by nature eager, poetic, and aspiring, followed his with breathless attention and delight.

As she watched her round loaves bake in the warm embers, she hearkened to these stories of lands and peoples that she had never heard of; Herodotus and Pliny yielded what to her were tales of absolute truth, and her grave and brooding fancy, starved so long, spread with rapture over these new fields of thought, glad as any bird loosed from a narrow cage. They were all as real and beautiful to her as they were to the Etruscan sacrificing to his garden god in the red and gold of his autumn orchards, or to the Latin beseeching the smile of the goddess of the myrtle bough alike upon his vineyards and upon his nuptial joys.

They sat together in the chamber of the Lucumo, the oil burning in the bronze lamps, the wood fire upon the stones, while she wove the basket osiers or spun the