r of
the flax. On their left ran a kind of parapet like the back of a long
stone bench, ornamented throughout its whole length with the Ateleta
shield and arms and a griffin alternately, under each of which again was
a sculptured mask through whose mouth a slender stream of water fell
into a basin below, shaped like a sarcophagus and ornamented with
mythological subjects in low relief. There must have been a hundred of
these mouths, for the walk was called the avenue of the Hundred
Fountains, but many of them were stopped up by time and had ceased to
spout, while others did very little. Many of the shields were broken and
moss had obliterated the coats of arms; many of the griffins were
headless and the figures on the sarcophagi appeared through a veil of
moss like fragments of silver work through an old and ragged velvet
cover. On the water in the basins--more green and limpid than
emerald--maiden-hair waved and quivered, or rose leaves, fallen from the
bushes overhead, floated slowly while the surviving waterpipes sent
forth a sweet and gurgling music that played over the murmur of the sea
like the accompaniment to a melody.

'Do you hear that?' said Donna Maria, standing still to listen,
attracted by the charm of the sound. 'That is the music of salt and of
sweet waters!'

She stood in the middle of the path, finger on lip, leaning a little
towards the fountains, in the attitude of one who listens and fears to
be disturbed. Andrea, who was next the parapet, turned and saw her thus
against a background of delicate and feathery verdure such as an Umbrian
painter would have given to an Annunciation or a Nativity.

'Maria!' he murmured, his heart filling with fond adoration,
'Maria!--Maria--!'

It afforded him untold pleasure to mingle the soft accents of her name
with the music of the waters. She did not look at him, but she laid her
finger on her lips as a sign to him to be silent.

'Forgive me,' he said, unable to control his emotion--'but I cannot help
myself--it is my soul that calls to you.'

A strange nervous exaltation had taken possession of him, all the
hill-tops of his soul had caught the lyric glow and flamed up
irresistibly; the hour, the place, the sunshine, everything about them
suggested love--from the extreme limits of the sea to the humble little
ferns of the fountains--all seemed to him part of the same magic circle
whose central point was this woman.

'You can never know,' he went on in a sub