Now and then, faintly from a distance, the bells of some hamlet or of some monastery would ring over the plains, and be wafted by the wind to her ear; now and then some shot would sound from some little lagoon, or some thicket of box elder, and wild olive, where the strangers were slaying the natives of the marsh and the moor; this was all she heard of the living world, and she desired to learn no more. She lived with the dead; and something of their cold repose, their ineffable indifference, their passionless defiance of mankind, had come upon her and entered her soul.
She had quite forgotten she was young. She had never known that she was beautiful.
She was not afraid of anything; she had the courage of Saturnino in her blood, and with it the superb innocence of a child's soul that has never been dimmed by the breath of folly.
Whilst it was summer weather even shepherds and herdsmen were never seen; the flocks were on the mountain, the harvests had been reaped at midsummer, the chase was forbidden by the law; all Maremma was as silent as the heart of the Sahara. Some-
