She had never known his fate.
The gypsy who had been found dead in the fields had been forgotten by the people before the same snows which had covered his body had melted at the first glimmer of the wintry sun.
Flamma could have told her; but he had never spoken one word in all her life to her, except in curt reprimand or in cruel irony.
All the old memories had died out; and no wanderers of her father's race had ever come into the peaceful and pastoral district of the northern seaboard, where they could have gained no footing, and could have made no plunder.
The sight of the little band of coins which had danced so often among her curls under the moonlit leaves in the Liebana to the leaping and tuneful measures of the viol moved her to a wistful longing for the smile and the voice of Phratos.
"I would never part with them for myself," she thought; "I would die of hunger first—were it only myself."
And still she was resolved to part with them; to sell her single little treasure—the sole gift of the only creature who had ever loved her, even in the very first hour that she had recovered it.
The sequins were worth no more than any baby's woven crown of faded daisies; but to her, as to the old peasant, they seemed, by their golden glitter, a source of wealth incalculable.
At twilight that day, as she stood by Arslàn, she spoke to him, timidly,—
"I go to Rioz with the two mules, at daybreak to-morrow, with flour for Flamma. It is a town larger than the one yonder. Is there anything I might do there—for you?"