She walked slowly through the cool evening shadows, while the birds fluttered about her head. She did not comprehend the terrible fate that had befallen her. She did not think that it was horrible to have no canopy but the clear sky, and no food but the grain rubbed from the ripe wheat-ears.
The fever of conscious passion which had been born in her, and the awe of the lonely death that she had witnessed, wore on her too heavily, and with too dreamy and delirious an absorption, to leave any room in her thoughts for the bodily perils or the bodily privations of her fate.
Some vague expectancy of some great horror, she knew not what, was on her. She was as in a trance, her brain was giddy, her eyes blind. Though she walked straightly, bearing her load upon her head, on and on as through the familiar paths, she yet had no goal, no sense of what she meant to do, or whither she desired to go.
The people were still about, going from their work in the fields, and their day at the town-market, to their homesteads and huts. Every one of them cast some word at her. For the news had spread by sunset over all the countryside that Flamma's treasure was gone to Holy Church.
They were spoken in idleness, but they were sharp, flouting, merciless arrows of speech, that struck her hardly as the speakers cast them, and laughed, and passed by her. She gave no sign that she heard, not by so much as the quiver of a muscle or the glance of an eye; but she, nevertheless, was stung by them to the core, and her heart hardened, and her blood burned.
Not one of them, man or boy, but made a mock of her as they marched by through the purpling leaves or the tall seed-grasses. Not one of them, mother or maiden, that gave a gentle look at her, or paused to remember that she was homeless, and knew no more where to lay her head that night than any sick hart driven from its kind.
She met many in the soft gray and golden evening, in the fruit-hung ways, along the edge of the meadows: fathers with their little children running by them, laden with plumes of meadow-sweet; mothers bearing their youngest born before them on the high sheepskin saddle; young lovers talking together as they drove the old cow to her byre; old people counting their market gains cheerily; children paddling knee-deep in the brooks for cresses. None of them had a kindly glance for her;—all had a flouting word. There was not one who offered her so much as a draught of milk; not one who wished her so much as a brief good-night.
"She will quit the country now; that is one good thing," she heard many of them say of her. And they spoke of Flamma, and praised him; saying, how pure as myrrh in the nostrils was the death of one who feared God!
The night came on nearer; the ways grew more lonely; the calf bleating sought its dam, the sheep folded down close together, the lights came out under the lowly roofs; now and then from some open window in the distance there came the sound of voices singing together; now and then there fell across her path two shadows turning one to the other.
She only was alone.