Such as it was, her life had been bound up with it; and though often its cool pale skies and level lands had been a prison to her, yet her heart clove to it in this moment when she left it--forever. She looked once at it long and lingeringly; then turned and went on her way.

She walked slowly through the cool evening shadows, while the birds fluttered about her head. She did not comprehend the terrible fate that had befallen her. She did not think that it was horrible to have no canopy but the clear sky, and no food but the grain rubbed from the ripe wheat-ears.

The fever of conscious pa.s.sion which had been born in her, and the awe of the lonely death that she had witnessed, wore on her too heavily, and with too dreamy and delirious an absorption, to leave any room in her thoughts for the bodily perils or the bodily privations of her fate.

Some vague expectancy of some great horror, she knew not what, was on her. She was as in a trance, her brain was giddy, her eyes blind. Though she walked straightly, bearing her load upon her head, on and on as through the familiar paths, she yet had no goal, no sense of what she meant to do, or whither she desired to go.

The people were still about, going from their work in the fields, and their day at the town-market, to their homesteads and huts. Every one of them cast some word at her. For the news had spread by sunset over all the countryside that Flamma's treasure was gone to Holy Church.

They were spoken in idleness, but they were sharp, flouting, merciless arrows of speech, that struck her hardly as the speakers cast them, and laughed, and pa.s.sed by her. She gave no sign that she heard, not by so much as the quiver of a muscle or the glance of an eye; but she, nevertheless, was stung by them to the core, and her heart hardened, and her blood burned.

Not one of them, man or boy, but made a mock of her as they marched by through the purpling leaves or the tall seed-gra.s.ses. Not one of them, mother or maiden, that gave a gentle look at her, or paused to remember that she was homeless, and knew no more where to lay her head that night than any sick hart driven from its kind.

She met many in the soft gray and golden evening, in the fruit-hung ways, along the edge of the meadows: fathers with their little children running by them, laden with plumes of meadow-sweet; mothers bearing their youngest born before them on the high sheepskin saddle; young lovers talking together as they drove the old cow to her byre; old people counting their market gains cheerily; children paddling knee-deep in the brooks for cresses. None of them had a kindly glance for her;--all had a flouting word. There was not one who offered her so much as a draught of milk; not one who wished her so much as a brief good-night.

"She will quit the country now; that is one good thing," she heard many of them say of her. And they spoke of Flamma, and praised him; saying, how pure as myrrh in the nostrils was the death of one who feared G.o.d!

The night came on nearer; the ways grew more lonely; the calf bleating sought its dam, the sheep folded down close together, the lights came out under the lowly roofs; now and then from some open window in the distance there came the sound of voices singing together; now and then there fell across her path two shadows turning one to the other.

She only was alone.

What did she seek to do?

She paused on a little slip of moss-green timber that crossed the water in the open plain, and looked down at herself in the shining stream.

None desired her--none remembered her; none said to her, "Stay with us a little, for love's sake."

"Surely I must be vile as they say, that all are against me!" she thought; and she pondered wearily in her heart where her sin against them could lie. That brief delirious trance of joy that had come to her with the setting of the last day's sun, had with the sun sunk away. The visions which had haunted her sleep under the thorn-tree whilst the thrush sang, had been killed under the cold and bitterness of the waking world. She wondered, while her face burned red with shame, what she had been mad enough to dream of in that sweet cruel slumber. For him--she felt that sooner than again look upward to his eyes she would die by a thousand deaths.

What was she to him?--a barbarous, worthless, and unlovely thing, whose very service was despised, whose very sacrifice was condemned.

"I would live as a leper all the days of my life, if, first, I might be fair in his sight one hour!" she thought; and she was conscious of horror or of impiety in the ghastly desire, because she had but one religion, this--her love.

She crossed the little bridge, and sat down to rest on the root of an old oak on the edge of the fields of poppies.

The evening had fallen quite. There was a bright moon on the edge of the plain. The cresset-lights of the cathedral glowed through the dusk. All was purple and gray and still. There were the scents of heavy earths and of wild thymes, and the breath of grazing herds. The little hamlets were but patches of darker shade on the soft brown shadows of the night.

White sea-mists, curling and rising, chased each other over the dim world.

She sat motionless, leaning her head upon her hand.

She could not weep, as other creatures could. The hours drew on. She had no home to go to; but it was not for this that she sorrowed.

Afar off, a step trod down the gra.s.ses. A hawk rustled through the gloom. A rabbit fled across the path. The boughs were put aside by a human hand; Arslan came out from the darkness of the woods before her.

With a sharp cry she sprang to her feet and fled, impelled by pa.s.sionate, reasonless instinct to hide herself forever and forever from the only eyes she loved.

Before her were the maze of the poppy-fields. In the moonlight their blossoms, so gorgeous at sunset or at noon, lost all their scarlet gaud and purple pomp, and drooped like discrowned kings stripped bare in the midnight of calamity.

Their colorless flowers writhed and twined about her ankles. Her brown limbs glistened in the gleam from the skies. She tightened her red girdle round her loins and ran, as a doe runs to reach the sanctuary.

Long withes of trailing gra.s.ses, weeds that grew among the gra.s.ses, caught her fleet feet and stopped her. The earth was wet with dew. A tangle of boughs and brambles filled the path. For once, her sure steps failed her. She faltered and fell.

Ere he could touch her, she rose again. The scent of the wet leaves was in her hair. The rain-drops glistened on her feet. The light of the stars seemed in her burning eyes. Around her were the gleam of the night, the scent of the flowers, the smell of woods. On her face the moon shone.

She was like a creature born from the freshness of dews, from the odor of foliage, from the hues of the clouds, from the foam of the brooks, from all things of the woods and the water. In that moment she was beautiful with the beauty of women.

"If only she could content me!" he thought. If only he had cared for the song of the reed by the river!

But he cared nothing at all for anything that lived; and a pursuit that was pa.s.sionless had always seemed to him base; and his feet were set on a stony and narrow road where he would not inc.u.mber his strength with a thing of her s.e.x, lest the burden should draw him backward one rood on his way.

He had never loved her; he never would love her; his senses were awake to her beauty, indeed, and his reason awed it beyond all usual gifts of her s.e.x. But he had used it in the service of his art, and therein had scrutinized, and portrayed, and debased until it had lost to him all that fanciful sanct.i.ty, all that half-mysterious charm, which arouse the pa.s.sion of love in a man to a woman.

So he let her be, and stood by her in the dusk of the night with no light in his own eyes.

"Do not fly from me," he said to her. "I have sought you, to ask your forgiveness, and----"

She stood silent, her head bent; her hands were crossed upon her chest in the posture habitual to her under any pain; her face was hidden in the shadow; her little bundle of clothes had dropped on the gra.s.ses, and was hidden by them. Of Flamma's death and of her homelessness he had heard nothing.

"I was harsh to you," he said, gently. "I spoke, in the bitterness of my heart, unworthily. I was stung with a great shame;--I forgot that you could not know. Can you forgive?"

"The madness was mine," she muttered. "It was I, who forgot----"

Her voice was very faint, and left her lips with effort; she did not look up; she stood bloodless, breathless, swaying to and fro, as a young tree which has been cut through near the root sways ere it falls. She knew well what his words would say.

"You are generous, and you shame me--indeed--thus," he said with a certain softness as of unwilling pain in his voice which shook its coldness and serenity.

This greatness in her, this wondrous faithfulness to himself, this silence, which bore all wounds from his hand, and was never broken to utter one reproach against him, these moved him. He could not choose but see that this nature, which he bruised and forsook, was n.o.ble beyond any common n.o.bility of any human thing.

"I have deserved little at your hands, and you have given me much," he said slowly. "I feel base and unworthy; for--I have sought you to bid you farewell."

She had awaited her death-blow; she received its stroke without a sound.

She did not move, nor cry out, nor make any sign of pain, but standing there her form curled within itself, as a withered fern curls, and all her beauty changed like a fresh flower that is held in a flame.

She did not look at him; but waited, with her head bent, and her hands crossed on her breast as a criminal waits for his doom.

His nerve nearly failed him; his heart nearly yielded. He had no love for her; she was nothing to him. No more than any one of the dark, nude savage women who had sat to his art on the broken steps of ruined Temples of the Sun; or the antelope-eyed creatures of desert and plain, who had come on here before him in the light of the East, and had pa.s.sed as the shadows pa.s.sed, and, like them, were forgotten.

She was nothing to him. And yet he could not choose but think--all this mighty love, all this majestic strength, all this superb and dreamy loveliness would die out here, as the evening colors had died out of the skies in the west, none pausing even to note that they were dead.

He knew that he had but to say to her, "Come!" and she would go beside him, whether to shame or ignominy, or famine or death, triumphant and rejoicing as the martyrs of old went to the flames, which were to them the gates of paradise.

He knew that there would not be a blow his hand could deal which could make her deem him cruel; he knew that there would be no crime which he could bid her commit for him which would not seem to her a virtue; he knew that for one hour of his love she would slay herself by any death he told her; he knew that the deepest wretchedness lived through by his side would be sweeter and more glorious than any kingdom of the world or heaven. And he knew well that to no man is it given to be loved twice with such love as this.

Yet,--he loved not her; and he was, therefore, strong, and he drove the death-stroke home, with pity, with compa.s.sion, with gentleness, yet surely home--to the heart.

"A stranger came to me an hour or more ago," he said to her; and it seemed even to him as though he slew a life G.o.dlier and purer and stronger than his own,--"an old man, who gave no name. I have seen his face--far away, long ago--I am not sure. The memory is too vague. He seemed a man of knowledge, and a man critical and keen. That study of you--the one among the poppies--you remember--took his eyes and pleased him. He bore it away with him, and left in its stead a roll of paper money--money enough to take me back among men--to set me free for a little s.p.a.ce. Oh child! you have seen--this h.e.l.l on earth kills me. It is a death in life. It has made me brutal to you sometimes; sometimes I must hurt something, or go mad."

She was silent; her att.i.tude had not changed, but all her loveliness was like one of the poppies that his foot had trodden on, discolored, broken, ruined. She stood as though changed to a statue of bronze.