"I do not understand," said Bébée.

"No; but you will."

"I will?--when?"

He smiled again.

"Oh--to-morrow, perhaps, or next year--or when Fate fancies."

"Or rather, when I choose," he thought to himself, and let his eyes rest
with a certain pleasure on the little feet, that went beside him in the
grass, and the pretty fair bosom that showed ever and again, as the
frills of her linen bodice were blown back by the wind and her own quick
motion.

Bébée looked also up at him; he was very handsome, and looked so to her,
after the broad, blunt, characterless faces of the Walloon peasantry
around her. He walked with an easy grace, he was clad in picture-like
velvets, he had a beautiful poetic head, and eyes like deep brown waters,
and a face like one of Jordaens' or Rembrandt's cavaliers in the
galleries where she used to steal in of a Sunday, and look up at the
paintings, and dream of what that world could be in which those people
had lived.

"_You_ are of the people of Rubes' country, are you not?" she asked him.

"Of what country, my dear?"