Folle-Farine

The Sun came from the east, and passed through the pale stricken faces that watched from the casement, and came straight to where the Red Mouse sat amidst the poppies.

"Have you let a female soul escape you?" said the Sun.

The Red Mouse answered:

"Love is stronger than I. When he keeps his hands pure, where he guards the door of the soul, I enter not. I sit outside and watch, and watch, and watch. But it is time lost. Love is strong; the door is barred to me."

Said the Sun:

"That is strange to hear. My sister, the Moon, has told me oftentimes that Eros is your pander—always."

"Anteros only," said the Red Mouse.

The Sun, wondering, said again:

"And yet I have heard that it is your boast that into every female soul you enter at birth, and dwell there unto death. Is it, then, not so?"

The Red Mouse answered:

"The boast is not mine; it is man's."

They smiled on her with a cold, serene, ironic scorn.

That night the moon found the Red Mouse, and said,—

"Did I not declare aright? Over every female thing you are victorious—soon or late?"

But the Red Mouse answered,—

"Nay, not so. For the soul still is closed against me; and the soul still is pure. But this men do not see, and women cannot know;—they are so blind."

She did not know, indeed, that she had done any great sin; she had done none willingly, and yet all people called her vile, and they must know.

The boldness and the independence of her nature roused themselves; she had prayed for him to the gods, and to the gods given herself for him—that was well—if they kept their faith. But if they forsook it? The blood rushed back to her heart with its old proud current; alone, she swore to herself to save him. To save him in the gods' despite.

She started; her hands ceased to wander through his hair, and touch his cold lips as she would touch the cup of a flower; she rose slowly to her feet.

She had heard; and the words, so homely and so familiar in the lives of all the poor, pierced the wild faiths and visions of her heated brain, as a ray of the clear daybreak pierces through the purple smoke from altar fires of sacrifice.

She drew the fair glistening hair through her hands; she touched the closed and blue veined eyelids tenderly; she laid her ear against his heart to hearken for the first returning pulses of the life she had brought back to him.