Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/59

 closed eyes and body gently swaying above the yellow reeds, lulled to delight by the sonorous chaunt that he was intoning, in her honour and for her wooing, over those solitary shallows.

The strange sound came to the human creature, to whom love was so perplexed and bitter-sweet a thing; she rested from her work with her hand upon her hip and the dry heath about her; she looked along the grey screen of the willow and olive bough, and saw the wild bird of the marshes and his mate yet unwon.

They were happy together there amidst the glancing water and the winter boughs. Love was the law of life, the gift and glory of all nature. Why not for her? Why not?

She knew so little of it.

She scarcely yet understood what she felt herself, and still less what he felt. To her innocence, his anger was unintelligible; to her ignorance, their life as it had been seemed so sweet that she could not comprehend why it only filled him with dissatisfaction and discontent. Herself, she would have asked no better than to live on so until death should find them out together.