Clelia Alba, moreover, had lost her youth earlier even than others:
lost it for ever when her husband at five-and-twenty years of age had
been killed by falling from an olive-tree of which the branch
sustaining him had cracked and broken under his weight. His neck had
been broken in the fall. She had been dancing and shouting with her
two-year-old child on the grassland not far off, romping and playing
ball with some dropped chestnuts; and when their play was over she
had lifted her boy on to her shoulder and run with him to find his
father. Under one of the great, gnarled, wide-spreading olives she
had seen him, lying asleep as she thought.

"Oh, lazy one, awake! The sun is only two hours old!" she had cried
merrily, and the child on her shoulder had cooed and shouted in
imitation, "Wake--wake--wake!" and she, laughing, had cast a chestnut
she had carried in her hand upon the motionless figure. Then, as the
prostrate form did not stir, a sudden terror had seized her, and she
had set the baby down upon the grass and run to the olive-tree. There
she had seen that this was death, for when she had raised him his
head had dropped, and seemed to hang like a poppy broken in a blast
of wind, and his eyes had no sight, and his mouth had no breath.

From that dread hour Clelia Alba had never laughed again. Her hair
grew white, and her youth went away from her for ever.

She lived for the sake of her son, but she and joy had parted company
for ever.

His death had made her sole ruler of the Terra Vergine; she had both
the knowledge and the strength necessary for culture of the land, and