"Do? What should you do?" he answered her, with inattention and almost impatience; for his heart was sore with the terrible weariness of inaction.
She looked at him very wistfully, and her mouth parted a little as though to speak; but his repulse chilled the words that rose to her lips.
She dared not say her thoughts to him, lest she should displease him.
"If it come to naught he had best not know, perhaps," she said to herself.
So she kept silence.
On the morrow, before the sun was up, she set out on her way, with the two mules, to Rioz.
It was a town distant some five leagues, lying to the southward. Both the mules were heavily laden with as many sacks as they could carry: she could ride on neither; she walked between them with a bridle held in either hand.
The road was not a familiar one to her; she had only gone thither some twice or thrice, and she did not find the way long, being full of her own meditations and hopes, and taking pleasure in the gleam of new waters and the sight of fresh fields, and the green simple loveliness of a pastoral country in late summer.
She met few people; a market-woman or two on their asses, a walking peddler, a shepherd, or a swineherd—these were all.
The day was young, and none but the country people were astir. The quiet roads were dim with mists; and the tinkle of a sheep's bell was the only sound in the silence.