"Come whither?" she asked him.
"Come with me—only to my supper-table—for one hour; my horses wait."
She threw the chain of stones at her feet.
"I have no hunger," she said, carelessly. "Go, ask those that have to your feast."
And she gave no other phrase in answer to all the many honeyed and persuasive words with which in vain he urged her, that night and many another night, until he wearied.
One day, in the green outskirts of the city, passing by under a gilded gallery, and a wide window, full of flowers, and hung with delicate draperies, there looked out the fair head of a woman, with diamonds in the ears, and a shroud of lace about it, while against the smiling scornful mouth a jeweled hand held a rose; and a woman's voice called to her, mockingly:
"Has the devil not heard you yet, that you still walk barefoot in the dust on the stones, and let the sun beat on your head? O fool! there is gold in the air, and gold in the dust, and gold in the very gutter here, for a woman!"
And the face was the face, and the voice the voice, of the gardener's wife of the old town by the sea.
She raised, to the gilded balcony above, her great sorrowful, musing eyes, full of startled courage: soon she comprehended; and then her gaze gave back scorn for scorn.
"Does that brazen scroll shade you better than did the trellised vine?" she said, with her voice ascending clear in its disdain. "And are those stones in your breast any brighter than the blue was in the eyes of your child?"