Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/258

 the land, and the trees grow grey, and the skies are ash colour.

In all that pallor and whiteness of the sickly town and the low-lying shore and the feeble people, the figure of Musa stood out with the grace and the rich colour of some crown imperial lily growing out of sand, straight as a young palm, luminous, golden, distinct.

She knew the danger of the marshes. She did not wish to die: who does that loves? Whilst the earth feels the steps of the feet we adore, to live is beautiful; whilst the eyes that we love unclose to the day, the sunrise that wakens them still smiles at us.

She shrank from any thought of death, since death would be eternal silence, endless separation; and she knew that to sleep on the swamps was death as sure as to drown in the deep sea. Yet the swamps stretched between her and the moorland tombs.

A hag came up and hissed in her ear that with such a face and such a form as hers money was to be had thick as the salt upon the sands, and Musa turned on her her great troubled eyes, half in wonder, half in scorn, and the woman shrank away.