I saw that her face was white as death.

But she gave one look upwards, and smiled the sweetest, most child-innocent smile; then heaped fresh wood on the fire, and, sitting down by the blaze, drew her wheel near her, and began to spin.

While she spun, she murmured a low strange song, to which the hum of the wheel made a kind of infinite symphony.

At length she paused in her spinning and singing, and glanced towards me, like a mother who looks whether or not her child gives signs of waking.

She smiled when she saw that my eyes were open.