Radu had gone off on an endless road, playing a melancholy tune on his wooden flute, his flock following him, his cowed dogs at his heels, his feet splashing about in the mud, the patient sheep leaving thousands of small footprints wherever they passed.
But Eric played no more, neither did he sing; and over the gold of his locks the silver began to spread more and more, like foam on the sea.
Wherever he stopped he bought canvas and paint, but each of his pictures showed always but the one and only face.
He painted the features of his dream in every form his heart could remember.
He represented her as first he had seen her, crowned with a wreath of bells, her old violin pressed under her cheek, her eyes full of the visions she alone could see. He painted her seated in the dust of the road with a circle of corn-ears round her delicate brow. He conjured up her beauty against the setting sun, whilst the coronet she wore was of autumn leaves all glowing as the blazing sky.
One of his sketches showed her shimmering and pale, lit by the rays of the moon, and this time it was a halo he had painted round the pureness of her heavenly face.
And once his restless fingers had created the picture of her marble features as she lay motionless on her bier, her face still and white under the brooding clouds, with the crown of thorns on her head, her wonderful eyes closed beneath the heavy lids, a smile of peace and happiness hovering like a blessing over her lips.
But one picture alone no human eye but his was ever allowed to see; on that one he had awakened, for a second and last time, the look her eyes had borne when he had closed them with his lips.
This sketch he kept jealously hidden beneath all the others, and it was never shown—not even Zorka had the right to cast a glance upon that expression which was too holy for mortal to look upon.
One of his pictures he had given to Zorka in sign of gratitude. It represented the lost Luck of the wandering tribe. She stood on a lonely plain, her hands joined behind her back, her eyes looking straight before her, her head slightly raised as if listening for the coming of a being she could not see.