Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/175

 She was tired, no doubt, going all those roads over the hot earth beside the mule to get him bread; but he did not think of it. The whole world had changed for him; life smiled at him once more.

Oh the joy, only to sit unmolested in the public square, and see the careless crowd go by, and feel the sun and wind upon his cheek!

That she was tired he had no leisure to remember. All the memories of his past were thronging about him like brothers and sisters giving welcome from long absence.

His heart was in that silent town amongst the shadowy waters, where he had drifted on his oars under the swell of the deep brazen bells of Ave Maria, and where he had seen the glisten of the lilies in the moonbeams when Death had slept with his mistress.

She was tired, no doubt; but all at once she fell back to nothing in his life; she vanished from it as a pluckt rose that drops to pieces goes silently away out of a careless hand.

'My dear! come forth and speak to me,' he said, with a sound of joy in his voice