The night was wet. The rain dropped through the roof. The rats fought on the floor and climbed the walls. The broken lattice blew to and fro with every gust of wind.
A palsied crone, with ravenous hands, sheared the locks of his fair hair, muttering, "They will fetch a stoup of brandy; and they would take them to-morrow in the dead-house."
The old man who owned the garret crammed into a wallet such few things of metal, or of wood, or of paper as were left in the utter poverty of the place, muttering, as he gathered the poor shreds of art, "They will do to burn; they will do to burn. At sunrise I will get help and carry the great canvas down."
The rats hurried to their holes at the light; the hag let fall her shears, and fled through an opening in the wall.
The old man looked up and smiled with a ghastly leer upon her in the shadows.
"To-morrow I will have the great canvas," he said, as he passed out, bearing his wallet with him. "And the students will give me a silver bit, for certain, for that fine corpse of his. It will make good work for their knives and their moulding-clay. And he will be dead to-morrow;—dead, dead."
And he grinned in her eyes as he passed her. A shiver shook her; she said nothing; it seemed to her as though she would never speak again.
She set down her lamp, and crossed the chamber, and kneeled beside the straw that made his bed.
She was quite calm.
She knew that the world gave her one chance—one only. She knew that men alone reigned, and that the gods were dead.