"I dream!" she said, suddenly, as she stooped and lifted the wounded insect gently on to the edge of a leaf. "But I dream wide awake."
Marcellin smiled.
"Never say so. They will think you mad. That is only what foolish things, called poets, do."
"What is a poet?"
"A foolish thing, I tell you—mad enough to believe that men will care to strain their eyes, as he strains his, to see the face of a God who never looks and never listens."
"Ah!"
She was so accustomed to be told that all she did was unlike to others, and was either wicked or was senseless, that she saw nothing except the simple statement of a fact in the rebuke which he had given her. She sat quiet, gazing down into the thick white dust of the road, bestirred by the many feet of mules and men that had trodden through it since the dawn.
"I dream beautiful things," she pursued, slowly. "In the moonlight most often. I seem to remember, when I dream—so much! so much!"
"Remember—what should you remember? You were but a baby when they brought you hither."
"So they say. But I might live before, in my father's kingdom—in the devil's kingdom. Why not?"