Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/122

 It was early, and all was still. There was not even a sail on the horizon.

She waded on to the sand, out of the water, and leaned to rest against a great boulder of ruddy tufa, putting her creel down beside her.

She wore one of those straw hats bell-shaped like the hat of Hermes, which still, with the shepherd's crook and the shepherd's reed-pipe, and the water-jar balanced on the women's heads, and the attitudes of the half-nude, symmetrical, and supple limbs, recall the statues of Pheidias and of Cleomenes to the student as he wanders here, wherever the lands are lonely and the goats crop the wild thyme.

With one hand resting on the rock behind her, and her feet lightly crossed and glistening with the yellow sand and the sea-water, she looked out over the broad blue heaving plain of light, and thought with grateful heart of that terrible night when the sea had devoured her and released her.

How dark it had been that night! 'Dark with the thoughts of the Lord,' as a Russian poet has said of the night on the steppes of Ukraine. She had died and