“Afield the grasses glint, and breeze doth seeming set aflow the current o’ a green-waved stream.
“Soft-footed strideth Telka, bare toes asink in soft earth and bits o’ green acling, bedamped, unto her snowy limbs. Smocked brown and aproned blue, she seemeth but a bit o’ earth and sky alight amid the field. Asplit at throat, the smock doth show a busom like to a sheen o’ fleecy cloud aveiling o’er the sun’s first flush.
“Betanned the cheek, and tresses bleached by sun at every twist of curl. Strong hands do clasp a branch long dead and dried, at end bepronged, and casteth fresh-cut blades to heap.”
Such is Telka in appearance. “She seemeth but a bit o’ earth and sky alight amid the field.” Seemeth, yes, but there is none of the sky in Telka. She is of the earth, earthy, an intensely practical young woman, industrious, economical, but with no sense of beauty whatever, no imagination, no thought above the level of the ground. “I fashioned jugs o’ clay,” her father complained, “and filled with bloom, and she becracked their necks and kept the swill therein.” Add to this a hot temper and a sharp tongue, and the character of Telka is revealed. Franco, the lover, on the other hand, is an artist and poet, although a field worker. He has been reared, as a foundling, by the friars in the neighboring monastery, and they have taught him something of the arts of mosaics and the illumination of missals. Between these two is a constant conflict of the material and the spiritual, and the theme of the story is the spiritual regeneration or development of Telka.
“See,” says Franco, “Yonder way-rose hath a bloom! She be a thrifty wench and hath saved it from the spring.”
Telka.—“I hate the thorned thing. Its barb hath pricked my flesh and full many a rent doth show it in my smock.”
Franco.—“Ah, Telka, thine eyes do look like yonder blue and shimmer like to brooklet’s breast.”
Telka.—“The brooklet be bestoned, and muddied by the swine. Thy tung doth trip o’er pretty words.”
Franco.—“But list, Telka, I would have thee drink from out my cup!”
Telka.—“Ah, show me then the cup.”