"Where am I?" she asked him, with a sharp terror in her voice.
"In my house," he said, simply. "I drove by you when you lay on the roadside. I recognized you. When people dream of immortality they generally die in a ditch. You would have died of a single night out there. I sent my people for you. You did not wake. You have slept here five hours."
"Is this Rioz?" She could not comprehend; a horror seized her, lest she should have strayed from Paris back into her mother's province.
"No. It is another home of mine; smaller, but choicer maybe. Who has cut your hair close?"
She shuddered and turned paler with the memory of that ghastly prison-house.
"Well; I am not sure but that you are handsomer,—almost. A sculptor would like you more now,—what a head you would make for an Anteros, or an Icarus, or a Hyacinthus! Yes—you are best so. You have been ill?"
She could not answer; she only stared at him, blankly, with sad, mindless, dilated eyes.
"A little gold!" she muttered, "a little gold!"
He looked at her awhile, then rose and went and sent his handwomen, who took her to an inner chamber, and bathed and attended her with assiduous care. She was stupefied, and knew not what they did.
They served her tenderly. They bathed her tired limbs and laid her, as gently as though she were some wounded royal captive, upon a couch of down.