Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/87

 even as he lies in his cool damp earth; the porcupine sleeps supine; the birds doze, songless; the hare is hot even in her leafy form lined with the milkwort; there is not a breath even amongst the sedges, that rustle so readily at the least air; the very water is sickly and lukewarm, even under the moon, when the snipes are bathing and questing.

When the rains come, as they do often here, they scarcely bring any coolness; they only serve to distil the dangerous miasma from the ground.

For the first time in her life the season affected Musa; she was not ill in any way, but she felt tired and oppressed. Treachery is like the fever of these lands; its injury may be shaken off and its poison defied, yet where it has once entered no life is ever quite the same again. Zirlo was only a little, selfish, cunning, merciless child; but he had stabbed her to the quick.

Never once did she regret her refusal to Maurice Sanctis. He had been so unlike all she had ever known; what he offered was so unintelligible to her. His relationship to Joconda seemed to her so like a fable, so unreal, so intangible, that he had left no impress on her mind.