Now, when the young bride raised her white face from her hands and looked about her, she could neither hear the speaking of the birds nor see the beauty of the wild flowers, yet in her heart she had a memory of both. Turning to the little flying things that came about her with soft, beating wings, she said:
"Once ye spake to me, and could give comfort with your counsel and love.
Now ye are lost in the voices of the city that ring forever in my ears."
Gazing upon the flowers, she said:
"Ye, too, your beauty hath faded. The gaudy flowers of the city have flashed their color in my eyes, so ye I cannot see or understand."
Then she rose to her feet, though she scarce could stand, and, stretching her arms towards the great purple hills that surrounded her father's far home, she said towards it:
"Why didst thou call me back since thou hast let me go from the sight of the heights that would have been always a prayer to uplift my soul? Ahone! that thy voice was loud enough to follow and give me unrest, that whispered always of my father's house and the valley of my home. So must I come each eve upon this hill to look upon it from my loneliness.
"Unloved am I, and unwished for, by him whom I have wedded. So my heart dieth within my breast, and my soul trembleth on the brink of my grave.
"Here upon the mountains, unprayed for and uncoffined, shall my body lie, for thy voice hath called me forth.
"Here my black sins shall see and pursue me even to destruction; but in the city I could have escaped with the crowding souls that confuse Death to count."
Then, as a remembrance of her sins came heavy upon her, she gave a loud cry and covered her face with her hands.