She sat without in the darkness, where no light fell among the thick shroud of one of the blossoming boughs of pear-trees, and now and then she looked and watched their laughter and companionship, and their gay and airy buffoonery, together there within the winehouse doors.
"All fools enjoy!" she thought; with that bitter wonder, that aching disdain, that involuntary injustice, with which the strong sad patience of a great nature surveys the mindless merriment of lighter hearts and brains more easily lulled into forgetfulness and content.
They came to her and pressed on her a draught of the wine, a share of the food, a handful of the honeyed cates of their simple banquet; even a portion of their silver and copper pieces with which the little leathern sack of their receipts was full,—for once,—to the mouth.
She refused all: the money she threw passionately away.
"Am I a beggar?" she said, in her wrath.
She remained without in the gloom among the cool blossoming branches that swayed above-head in the still night, while the carousal broke up and the peasants went on their way to their homes, singing along the dark streets, and the lights were put out in the winehouse, and the trill of the grasshopper chirped in the fields around.
"You will die of damp, roofless in the open air this moonless night," men, as they passed away, said to her in wonder.
"The leaves are roof enough for me," she answered them: and stayed there with her head resting on the roll of her sheepskin; wide awake through the calm dark hours; for a bed within she knew that she could not pay, and she would not let any charity purchase one for her.
At daybreak when the others rose she would only take from them the crust that was absolutely needful to keep life in her. Food seemed to choke her as it passed her lips,—since how could she tell but what his lips were parched dry with hunger or were blue and cold in death?
That morning, as they started, one of the two youths who bore their traveling gear and the rude appliances of their little stage upon his shoulders from village to village when they journeyed thus—being oftentimes too poor to permit themselves any other mode of transit and of porterage—fell lame and grew faint and was forced to lay down his burden by the roadside.