"Folle-Farine,—I go on your errand. If you repent, there is time yet to stay me. Say—do you bid me still set your Norse-god free from the Cave of the Snakes?"
She, startled, looked up into the roofing of the thick foliage; she saw shining on her with a quiet smile the eyes which she had likened to the eyes of the Red Mouse. They scanned her gravely and curiously: they noted the change in her since the last sun had set.
"What did he say to you for your gold?" the old man asked.
She was silent; the blood of an intolerable shame burned in her face; she had not thought that she had betrayed her motive in seeking a price for her chain of coins.
He laughed a little softly.
"Ah! You fancied I did not know your design when you came so bravely to sell your Moorish dancing-gear. Oh, Folle-Farine!—female things, with eyes like yours, must never hope to keep a secret!"
She never answered; she had risen and stood rooted to the ground, her head hung down, her breast heaving, the blood coming and going in her intolerable pain, as though she flushed and froze under a surgeon's probe.
"What did he say to you?" pursued her questioner. "There should be but one language possible from a man of his years to a woman of yours."
She lifted her eyes and spoke at last:
"He said that I did him a foul shame: the gold lies in the sands of the river."