She sat awhile by the roadside and counted his gold by the gleam of the stars, and put it away securely in her girdle, and drank from a brook beside her, and tried to eat a little of the bread which the old boatman had given her as her wages, with three pieces of copper money.
But the crust choked her; she felt hot with fever, and her throat was parched and full of pain.
The moon was full upon her where she sat; the red and white of her dress bore a strange look; her face was colorless, and her eyes looked but the larger and more lustrous for the black shadows beneath them, and the weary swollen droop of their lids.
She sat there, and pondered on the next step she had best take.
A woman came past her, and stopped and looked.
The moonlight was strong upon her face.
"You are a handsome wench," said the wayfarer, who was elderly and of pleasant visage; "too handsome, a vast deal, to be sitting alone like one lost. What is the matter?"
"Nothing," she answered.
The old reserve clung to her and fenced her secret in, as the prickles of a cactus-hedge may fence in the magnolia's flowers of snow.
"What, then? Have you a home?"