Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/200

 no more to hers; he lived in that great unknown world which had stolen and absorbed him; and therefore the courage of her life came back to her after a time.

Some day he might remember.

Some day he might have need of her.

So she lived on, and the warmth of the year grew into full summer, and the field flowers perished, as her little child had done, under the unbearable light of the sun.

A strange silence seemed to her to have fallen on all the world, although around her in truth the solitary moors were still musical with many a nightingale, and many a cushat cried its happy call from pine to pine, and across the far edge of the great plains there went many a band of reapers, come down from the mountains to lay the tall wheat low, many of them going by singing, with lutes strumming in front of them, and dogs about their feet, and wild magnolia flowers from old forsaken gardens slung with the wine gourds and swinging at their waists.

But they were too far off to be more than distant dark lines against the sky, and could their songs have reached her she would have been deaf to them, as she