Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/95



EANWHILE, in Maremma, as the August heats lay heavy on the land, fate was at work for Musa; the fate which comes to all, and sometimes, like the prophet of old, blesses and curses in the same breath.

One day she went out on the sea; the sea was as hot as the land was, but still she was glad to bathe in it, to swim against it, to pull her boat through it, to watch its lovely colours, here the line of a pigeon's breast, there deeply, darkly blue as the indigo-berries of the laurestinus when they purpled the moors in autumn. There was a slight southerly wind, and it filled the little lateen sail that she had contrived, by much hard work with axe and mallet, to fix up in