Then the old peasant trudging to his labor in the obscurity of the early day saw her, and struck at her with his foot and woke her roughly, and muttered, "Get thee up; is it such beggars as thee that should be abed when the sun breaks?"
She opened her eyes, and smiled on him unconsciously, as she had smiled in her brief oblivion. The passion of her dreams was still about her; her mouth burned, her limbs trembled; the air seemed to her filled with music, like the sound of the mavis singing in the thorn.
Then she remembered; and shuddered; and arose, knowing the sweet mad dream, which had cheated her, a lie. For she awoke alone.
She did not heed the old man's words, she did not feel his hurt; yet she obeyed him, and left the place, and dragged herself feebly towards Yprès by the sheer unconscious working of that instinct born of habit which takes the ox or the ass back undriven through the old accustomed ways to stand beside their plowshare or their harness faithfully and unbidden.
Where the stream ran by the old mill-steps the river-reeds were blowing in the wind, with the sunrays playing in their midst, and the silver wings of the swallows brushing them with a sweet caress.
"I thought to be the reed chosen by the gods!" she said bitterly in her heart, "but I am not worthy—even to die."
For she would have asked of fate no nobler thing than this—to be cut down as the reed by the reaper, if so be that through her the world might be brought to hearken to the music of the lips that she loved.
She drew her aching weary limbs feebly through the leafy ways of the old mill-garden. The first leaves of autumn fluttered down upon her head; the last scarlet of the roses flashed in her path as she went; the wine-like odors of the fruits were all about her on the air. It was then fully day. The sun was up; the bells rang the sixth hour far away from the high towers and spires of the town.
At the mill-house, and in the mill-yard, where usually every one had arisen and were hard at labor whilst the dawn was dark, everything was still. There was no sign of work. The light blazed on the panes of the casements under the eaves, but its summons failed to arouse the sleepers under the roof.
The bees hummed around their houses of straw; the pigeons flew to and fro between the timbers of the walls, and the boughs of the fruit trees. The mule leaned his head over the bar of the gate, and watched with wistful eyes. The cow in her shed lowed, impatient for some human hands to unbar her door, and lead her forth to her green-clovered pasture. A dumb boy, who aided in the working of the mill, sat astride of a log of timber, kicking his feet among the long grasses, and blowing thistle down above his head upon the breeze.