er wearily, and as she stood up she closed her eyes for a
moment as if overcome by sudden giddiness. Andrea rose too, and both
followed in Delfina's wake.

The mischievous child had stripped half the wood of fruit. The lower
branches had not a single berry left. With the aid of a stick, picked up
goodness knows where, she had reaped a prodigious harvest and then piled
up the fruit into one great heap, so intense in colouring against the
dark soil, that it looked like a heap of glowing embers. The flowers had
apparently not attracted her; there they hung, white and pink and yellow
and translucent, more delicate than the flowering locks of the acacia,
more graceful than the lily-of-the-valley, all bathed in dim golden
light.

'Oh Delfina! Delfina!' exclaimed Donna Maria, looking round upon the
devastation, 'what have you done!'

The child laughed and clapped her hands with glee in front of the
crimson pyramid.

'You will have to leave it all here.'

'No--no--'

At first she refused, but she thought for a moment, and then said, half
to herself with beaming eyes: 'The doe will come and eat them.'

She had probably noticed the beautiful creature moving about in the
park, and the thought of having collected so much food for it pleased
her and fired her imagination, already full of stories in which deer are
beneficent and powerful fairies who repose on silken cushions and drink
from jewelled cups. She remained silent and absorbed, picturing to
herself the beautiful tawny animal browsing on the fruit under the
flowering trees.'

'Come,' said Donna Maria, 'it is getting late.'

Holding Delfina by the hand, she walked on till they came to the edge of
the wood. Here she stopped to look at the sea, which, catching the
reflection of the clouds, was like a vast undulating, glittering sheet
of silk.

Without a word, Andrea plucked a spray of blossom, so full that the twig
it hung from bent beneath its weight, and offered it to Donna Maria. As
she took it from his hand she looked at him, but she did not open her
lips.

They passed on down the avenue, Delfina talking, talking incessantly;
repeating the same things over and over again, infatuated about the doe,
inventing long monotonous tales in which she ran one fairy story into
another, losing herself in labyrinths of her own creation, as if the
sparkling freshness of the morning air had gone to her head. And round
about the doe she grouped the children of the king, Cind