"The picture will feed the stove; the law will give me that."
She heard and shivered, and looked at the bed of straw, and on the great canvas of the Barabbas.
Before another day had come and gone, he would lie in the common ditch of the poor, and the work of his hand would be withered, as a scroll withers in a flame.
If she tried once more? If she sought human pity, human aid? Some deliverance, some mercy—who could say?—might yet be found, she thought. The gods were dead; but men,—were they all more wanton than the snake, more cruel than the scorpion?
For the first time in seven days she left his side.
She rose and staggered from the garret, down the stairway, into the lower stories of the wilderness of wood and stone.
She traced her way blindly to the places she had known. They closed their doors in haste, and fled from her in terror.
They had heard that she had gone to tend some madman, plague-stricken with some nameless fever; and those wretched lives to life clung closely, with a frantic lore.
One woman she stayed, and held with timid, eager bands. Of this woman she had taken nothing all the summer long in wage for waking her tired eyes at daybreak.
"Have pity!" she muttered. "You are poor, indeed, I know; but help me. He dies there!"