r; her anxiety was pretty to watch, and he left the
trouble in her heart like a bee in the chalice of a lily. Besides, the
little wicket gate was between them; he was musing whether he would push
it open once more.

Her fate was in the balance, though she did not dream it: he had dealt
with her tenderly, honestly, sacredly all that day--almost as much so as
stupid Jeannot could have done. He had been touched by her trust in him,
and by the unconscious beauty of her fancies, into a mood that was unlike
all his life and habits. But after all, he said to himself--

After all!--

Where he stood in the golden evening he saw the rosy curled mouth, the
soft troubled eves, the little brown hands that still tried to fasten
the rosebud, the young peach-like skin where the wind stirred the
bodice;--she was only a little Flemish peasant, this poor little Bebee, a
little thing of the fields and the streets, for all the dreams of God
that abode with her. After all--soon or late--the end would be always the
same. What matter!

She would weep a little to-morrow, and she would not kneel any more at
the shrine in the garden wall; and then--and then--she would stay here
and marry the good boor Jeannot, just the same after a while; or drift
away after him to Paris, and leave her two little wooden shoes, and her
visions of Christ in the fields at evening, behind her forevermore, and
do as all the others did, and take not only silken stockings but the
Cinderella slipper that is called Gold, which brings all other good
things in its train;--what matter!

He had meant this from the first, because she was so pretty, and those
little wooden sabots ran so lithely over the stones; though he was not in
love with her, but only idly stretched his hand for her as a child by
instinct stretches to a fruit that hangs in the sun a little rosier and a
little nearer than the rest.

What matter--he said to himself--she loved him, poor little soul, though
she did not know it; and there would always be Jeannot glad enough of a
handful of bright French gold.

He pushed the gate gently against her; her hands fastened the rosebud and
drew open the latch themselves.

"Will you come in a little?" she said, with the happy light in her face.
"You must not stay long, because the flowers must be watered, and then
there are Annemie's patterns--they must be done or she will have no money
and so no food--but if you would come in for a little? And see, if you
wai