and some drifted into the Seine water, rusted,
wind-tossed, fallen leaves, that were wanted of no man. Anyhow it was
so common to see them, pretty but homely things, with their noisy shoes
and their little all in a bundle, that no one even looked once at Bebee.

She was not bewildered. As she had gone through her own city, only
thinking of the roses in her basket and of old Annemie in her garret, so
she went through Paris, only thinking of him for whose sake she had come
thither.

Now that she was really in his home she was happy,--happy though her head
ached with that dull odd pain, and all the sunny glare went round and
round like a great gilded humming-top, such as the babies clapped their
hands at, at the Kermesse.

She was happy: she felt sure now that God would not let him die till she
got to him. She was quite glad that he had left her all that long,
terrible winter, for she had learned so much and was so much more fitted
to be with him.

Weary as she was, and strange as the pain in her head made her feel, she
was happy, very happy; a warm flush came on her little pale cheeks as she
thought how soon he would kiss them, her whole body thrilled with the old
sweet nameless joy that she had sickened for in vain so long.

Though she saw nothing else that was around her, she saw some little
knots of moss-roses that a girl was selling on the quay, as she used to
sell them in front of the Maison du Roi. She had only two sous left, but
she stopped and bought two little rosebuds to take to him. He had used to
care for them so much in the summer in Brabant.

The girl who sold them told her the way to the street he lived in; it was
not very far of the quay. She seemed to float on air, to have wings like
the swallows, to hear beautiful musk all around. She felt for her beads,
and said aves of praise. God was so good.

It was quite night when she reached the street, and sought the number of
his house. She spoke his name softly, and trembling very much with joy,
not with any fear, but it seemed to her too sacred a thing ever to utter
aloud.

An old man looked out of a den by the door, and told her to go straight
up the stairs to the third floor, and then turn to the right. The old
man chuckled as he glanced after her, and listened to the wooden shoes
pattering wearily up the broad stone steps.

Bebee climbed them--ten, twenty, thirty, forty. "He must be very poor!"
she thought, "to live so high"; and yet the place was