he had neglected to reward her with the anticipated kiss. "I wonder
whether he remembers?--girls remember such silly things." In this fancy
she stood still, her bright face addressed towards the court. Through
the trees over the wall appeared the gray dome of the cathedral.
Launcelot came sauntering and waving his watering-can. The stout figure
of the canon issued from the doorway of a small pavilion which he called
his _omnibus_, passed along under the shadow of the wall, and out into
the glowing sun. Madame entered the _salon_, her light quick steps
ringing on the _parquet_, her holiday voice clear as a carol, her
holiday figure gay as a showy-plumaged bird.

"Ma chérie, tu n'es pas sortie? tu ne fais rien?"

Bessie awoke from her reverie, and confessed that she was idle this
morning, very idle and uncomfortably restless: it was the heat, she
thought, and she breathed a vast sigh. Madame invited her to _do_
something by way of relief to her _ennui_, and after a brief considering
fit she said she would go into the cathedral, where it was the coolest,
and take her sketching-block.

Oh, for the moist glades of the Forest, for the soft turf under foot and
the thick verdure overhead! Bessie longed for them with all her heart as
she passed upon the sun-baked stones to the great door of the cathedral.
The dusk of its vaulted roof was not cool and sweet like the arching of
green branches, but chill with damp odors of antiquity. She sat down in
one of the arcades near the portal above the steps that descend into the
nave. The immense edifice seemed quite empty. The perpetual lamp burned
before the altar, and wandering echoes thrilled in the upper galleries.
Through a low-browed open door streamed across the aisle a flood of
sunshine, and there was the sound of chisel and mallet from the same