"Nothing," Bébée would answer, with a quick color in her face; and they
would reply in contemptuous reproof, "Careless little fool; you should
make enough to buy you wood all winter. When the man from Ghent painted
Trine and her cow, he gave her a whole gold bit for standing still so
long in the clover. The Krebs would be sure to lend you her cow, if it
be the cow that makes the difference."

Bébée was silent, weeding her carnation bed;--what could she tell them
that they would understand?

She seemed so far away from them all--those good friends of her
childhood--now that this wonderful new world of his giving had opened to
her sight.

She lived in a dream.

Whether she sat in the market place taking copper coins, or in the
moonlight with a book on her knees, it was all the same. Her feet ran,
her tongue spoke, her hands worked; she did not neglect her goat or her
garden, she did not forsake her house labor or her good deeds to old
Annémie; but all the while she only heard one voice, she only felt one
touch, she only saw one face.

Here and there--one in a million--there is a female thing that can love
like this, once and forever.

Such an one is dedicated, birth upwards, to the Mater Dolorosa.

He had something nearer akin to affection for her than he had ever had in
his life for anything, but he was never in love with her--no more in