himself; but to ask anything about him--why he was there? what his rank
was? why he stayed in the city at all?--was a sort of treason that never
entered her thoughts.

Psyche, if she had been as simple and loyal as Bébée was, would never
have lighted her own candle; but even Psyche would not have borrowed any
one else's lamp to lighten the love darkness.

To Bébée he was sacred, unapproachable, unquestionable; he was a
wonderful, perfect happiness that had fallen into her life; he was a
gift of God, as the sun was.

She took his going and coming as she took that of the sun, never dreaming
of reproaching his absence, never dreaming of asking if in the empty
night he shone on any other worlds than hers.

It was hardly so much a faith with her as an instinct; faith must reason
ere it know itself to be faith. Bébée never reasoned any more than her
roses did.

The good folks in the market place watched her a little anxiously; they
thought ill of that little moss-rose that every day found its way to one
wearer only; but after all they did not see much, and the neighbors
nothing at all. For he never went home to her, nor with her, and most of
the time that he spent with Bébée was in the quiet evening shadows, as
she went up with her empty basket through the deserted country roads.

Bébée was all day long in the city, indeed, as other girls were, but with
her it had always been different. Antoine had always been with her up to
the day of his death; and after his death she had sat in the same place,