Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/101

 them both and death by hunger. She passed many hours of the day in her usual work; the boat had been flung up on the shore by the Sasso Scritto not injured too much for her to repair it. She continued to fish, to spin, to hew and carry wood, to plait the biodo, and to cut the heath; only he would never have her go more into the towns and villages, and so they lived as best they could on the wild oats of the last year, on the roots of the earth, and the eggs of the plover and water-hens, and when she took those she was always heedful to leave one or two In each nest.

'I could make nothing unhappy now,' she said to herself; and only for his sake, never for her own, would she ever have robbed the birds even thus far.

Her daily labours remained the same, but it seemed to her as if she had the strength of those Immortals he told her she resembled. She felt as though she trod on air, as though she drank the sunbeams and they gave her force like wine; she had no sense of fatigue; she might have had wings at her ankles and nectar in her veins. She was so happy, with that perfect happiness which only comes where the world cannot