He was in haste, and, without more words, he loosened his sail, and cut his moor-rope, and set his little vessel adrift down the water-ways of the town, the violets filling the air with their odors and blue as the eyes of a child that wakes smiling.
All the old familiar streets, all the dusky gateways and dim passages, all the ropes on which the lanterns and the linen hung, all the wide carved stairways water-washed, all the dim windows that the women filled with pots of ivy and the song of birds,—she was drifting from them with every pulse of the tide, never again to return; but she looked at them without seeing them, indifferent, and having no memory of them; her brain, and her heart, and her soul were with the boat that she followed.
It was the day of the weekly market. The broad flat-bottomed boats were coming in at sunrise, in each some cargo of green food or of farm produce; a strong girl rowing with bare arms, and the sun catching the white glint of her head-gear. Boys with coils of spotted birds' eggs, children with lapfuls of wood-gathered primroses, old women nursing a wicker cage of cackling hens or hissing geese, mules and asses, shaking their bells and worsted tassels, bearing their riders high on sheepskin saddles,—these all went by her on the river, or on the towing path, or on the broad highroad that ran for a space by the water's edge.
All of these knew her well; all of these some time or another had jeered her, jostled her, flouted her, or fled from her. But no one stopped her. No one cared enough for her to care even to wonder whither she went.
She glided out of the town, past the banks she knew so well, along the line of the wood and the orchards of Yprès. But what at another time would have had pain for her, and held her with the bonds of a sad familiarity, now scarcely moved her. One great grief and one great passion had drowned all lesser woes, and scorched all slighter memories.
All day long they sailed.
At noon the old man gave her a little fruit and a crust as part of her wage; she tried to eat them, knowing she would want all her strength.
They left the course of the stream that she knew, and sailed farther than she had ever sailed; passed towns whose bells were ringing, and noble bridges gleaming in the sun, and water-mills black and gruesome, and bright orchards and vineyards heavy with the promise of fruit. She knew none of them. There were only the water flowing under the keel, and the blue sky above, with the rooks circling in it, which had the look of friends to her.
The twilight fell; still the wind served, and still they held on; the mists came, white and thick, and stars rose, and the voices from the shores sounded strangely, with here and there a note of music or the deep roll of a drum.
So she drifted out of the old life into an unknown world. But she never once looked back. Why should she?—He had gone before.