She knew the northern birds went away with the first warm wind of February; she 'had every year since she could remember seen the gulls, and gannets, and storm-swallows, and all their congeners, take their flight due north, never to return until winter returned too.
She missed the timid and yet bold creatures of the Pole, after which the people of Santa Tarsilla had named her; and she missed the little red birds of the north with their tiny sweet song, piping when the full melody of the nightingale was mute.
But whilst the sky was full of storm clouds and the sea of froth and foam, and the snow was still half-way down the sides of the black Argentaro rocks, and wholly clothed the Apennines, she was cheered by the glad exuberant chatter of the dauntless starling.
Then, as the year grew a little older, and the blackthorn of the brakes grew white with blossom before the leaf, and the green silent wolds that enwrapped the dead cities and the dead nations were rosy, and purple, and lilac with the springing of the anemones; then, though the little robin no more showed his red waistcoat under the myrtle scrub,
