"She is a witch, there is no doubt about that," said again the old woman who sat knitting on the stone bench in the sun.
"And her mother such a saint!" sighed another old dame who was grouping green herbs together for salads.
And all the while the girl Edmée clasped her almond-tree and sobbed over it.
"If she were only here," swore Edmée's lover, under his breath.
At that moment the accused came towards them, erect in the full light.
She had passed through the market with a load of herbs and flowers for one of the chief hostelries in the square, and was returning with the flat broad basket balanced empty on her head.
Something of their mutterings and curses reached her, but she neither hastened nor slackened her pace; she came on towards them with her free, firm step, and her lustrous eyes flashing hard against the sun.
She gave no sign that she had heard except that the blood darkened a little in her cheeks, and her mouth curled with a haughtier scorn. But the sight of her, answering in that instant to their hate, the sight of her with the sunshine on her scarlet sash and her slender limbs, added impulse to their rage.
They had talked themselves into a passionate belief in her as a thing hellborn and unclean, that brought all manner of evil fates among them. They knew that holy water had never baptized her; that neither cross nor chrism had ever exorcised her; that a church's door had never opened to her; they had heard their children hoot her many a time unrebuked, they had always hated her with the cruelty begotten by a timid cowardice or a selfish dread. They were now ripe to let their hate take shape in speech and act.
The lover of Edmée loosened his hand from the silver beads about her throat, and caught up instead a stone.