For a little while she stood there, and the old passion of song came back to her, and tore at her heart; but she could not sing, for she was dumb.
“And I have nothing else left,” she thought, “with which I may give back the life to the golden poppy.”
“Crimson for golden,” the south wind called softly in her ear.
So she lay down once more, and put her pretty mouth to the dead bloom of the poppy, and she could not speak, but she thought the words—“Drink my blood! Drink my life, and live!”
And the dead flower drained out her life, and she grew white and whiter, and when the moonlight fell upon her, not a tint of colour was in her cheeks.
Out of the forest the south wind crept, and he seemed a little excited as he saw the dead girl lying there.
“I’ll never do it again,” he swore; “if they want such things done, they must do them themselves. Curse them!” Then he howled, for his masters had overheard him and chastised him.
He went back to the forest, and brooded all day over what had happened. And that night he went mad, and came forth to do one or two things on his own account. There was the tall poppy growing by the head of the dead girl, and it had become crimson.
The south wind gave one puff, and blew it out of the ground into the sea.
And over the child’s body it blew the finest white sand that it could find, until a heavy drift lay over it.