The death on the open highway; the numbness, and stillness, and deafness to all the maledictions of men.
The shameful bier made at night on the dung-cart, amidst loathing glances and muttered curses; the nameless grave in the common ditch with the beggar, the thief, the harlot, and the murderer,—these which were so awful to all others seemed to her as sweet as to sink to sleep on soft unshorn grass, whilst rose-leaves were shaken in the wind, and fell as gently as kisses upon the slumberer.
For even those at least were rest. And she in her youth and in her strength, and in the blossom of her beauty, gorgeous as a passion-flower in the sun, envied bitterly the old man who had died at his work on the public road, hated by his kind, weighted with the burden of nigh a hundred years.
For his death was not more utterly lonely and desolate than was her life; and to all taunts and to all curses the ears of the dead are deaf.
BOOK III.
CHAPTER I.
Night had come; a dark night of earliest spring. The wild day had sobbed itself to sleep after a restless life with fitful breaths of storm and many sighs of shuddering breezes.
The sun had sunk, leaving long tracks of blood-red light across one-half the heavens.