But it was a kind of neuralgia in the very soul, never to be
located in the human body, and yet physical. Coming over the brow of
a heathy, rocky hillock, and seeing Ciccio beyond leaning deep over
the plough, in his white shirt-sleeves following the slow, waving,
moth-pale oxen across a small track of land turned up in the heathen
hollow, her soul would go all faint, she would almost swoon with
realization of the world that had gone before. And Ciccio was so
silent, there seemed so much dumb magic and anguish in him, as if he
were for ever afraid of himself and the thing he was. He seemed, in
his silence, to _concentrate_ upon her so terribly. She believed she
would not live.

Sometimes she would go gathering acorns, large, fine acorns, a
precious crop in that land where the fat pig was almost an object of
veneration. Silently she would crouch filling the pannier. And far
off she would hear the sound of Giovanni chopping wood, of Ciccio
calling to the oxen or Pancrazio making noises to the ass, or the
sound of a peasant's mattock. Over all the constant speech of the
passing river, and the real breathing presence of the upper snows.
And a wild, terrible happiness would take hold of her, beyond
despair, but very like despair. No one would ever find her. She had
gone beyond the world into the pre-world, she had reopened on the
old eternity.

And then Maria, the little elvish old wife of Giovanni, would come
up with the cows. One cow she held by a rope round its horns, and
she hauled it from the patches of young corn into the rough grass,
from the little plantation of trees in among the heath. Maria wore
the full-pleated white-sleeved dress of the peasants, and a red
kerchief on her head. But her dress was dirty, and her face was
dirty, and the big gold rings of her ears hung from ears which
perhaps had never been washed. She was rather smoke-dried too, from
perpetual wood-smoke.

Maria in her red kerchief hauling the white cow, and screaming at
it, would come laughing towards Alvina, who was rather afraid of
cows. And then, screaming high in dialect, Maria would talk to her.
Alvina smiled and tried to understand. Impossible. It was not
strictly a human speech. It was rather like the crying of
half-articulate animals. It certainly was not Italian. And yet
Alvina by dint of constant hearing began to pick up the coagulated
phrases.

She liked Maria. She liked them all. They were all very kind to her,
as far as they kn