Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/198

 the voice of Este in his broken babyish murmurs; if she had taught him to look with tenderness at the little wren in her hole and the brown coot on her waterside nest; if she had carried him on her shoulder to her morning work upon the moors, and borne him homeward with her as the evening bells rang from the far hills and shores—if he had lived, she would have loved her lover in him.

For him she would have worked day and night as she had done for Este; she would have kept him fresh as the rose, fair to see as the white birds from the north; she would have carried him in her strong young arms, she would have taught him love as the nightingale teaches its song to its offspring; she would have prayed for him, tended him, cherished him, made him lovely in all ways, and then perhaps one day she would have taken courage and led him by the hand up to his father's side, and said through him—'Love, who has ever loved as I?'

But he was dead; dead as the faded narcissus shrunk away beneath the leaves.

All that could never be: never, never.

He was dead like the child Itys, for whom his mother mourns through all the ages with every summer eve.