Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/93

 'Doubtless the Sicilian lover is with her,' he said again and again to himself as he worked on at the great frescoes.

And yet he could not fancy her with any lover; he could not think of those superb lips as tremulous with any tenderness or warmed with any kiss. It seemed to him that she could never live in any other way than so, alone with her Etruscan dead.

To living humanity she was the Musoncella.

He worked at the frescoes summer and autumn, and was never content with them; and went back to Paris, where his house was the envy of his fellows. There he shut himself in during those chilly autumn days when the leaves were flying in scarlet squadrons down the asphalte without, and he painted that which haunted him.

He portrayed her just as he had seen her in the hot transparent morning, with the gold of the coronilla and the broom behind her, and the turquoise blue of the sky beyond. He gave the picture that strength, that liberty, that untamable spirit, that freshness of open-air life, and that repose of solitude which were in her. His