e swans swayed to and fro, and
the willows grew silver in the sunshine.

Bebee, only, lay quite still and never spoke. The starling sat above her
head; his wings drooped, and he was silent too.

Towards sunset Bebee raised herself and called aloud: they ran to her.

"Get me a rosebud--one with the moss round it," she said to them.

They went out into the garden, and brought her one wet with dew.

She kissed it, and laid it in one of her little wooden shoes that stood
upon the bed.

"Send them to him," she said wearily; "tell him I walked all the way."

Then her head drooped; then momentary consciousness died out: the old
dull lifeless look crept over her face again like the shadow of death.

The starling spread his broad black wings above her head. She lay quite
still once more. The women left the rosebud in the wooden shoe, not
knowing what she meant.

Night fell. Mere Krebs watched beside her. Jeannot went down to the old
church to beseech heaven with all his simple, ignorant, tortured soul.
The villagers hovered about, talking in low sad voices, and wondering,
and dropping one by one into their homes. They were sorry, very sorry;
but what could they do?

It was quite night. The lights were put out in the lane. Jeannot, with
Father Francis, prayed before the shrine of the Seven Sorrows. Mere Krebs
slumbered in her rush-bottomed chair; she was old and worked hard. The
starling was awake.

Bebee rose in her bed, and looked around, as she had done when she had
asked for the moss-rosebud.

A sense of unutterable universal pain ached over all her body.

She did not see her little home, its four white walls, its lattice
shining in the moon, its wooden bowls and plates, its oaken shelf and
presses, its plain familiar things that once had been so dear,--she did
not see them; she only saw the brown woman with her arm about his throat.

She sat up in her bed and slipped her feet on to the floor; the pretty
little rosy feet that he had used to want to clothe in silken stockings.

Poor little feet! she felt a curious compassion for them; they had served
her so well, and they were so tired.

She sat up a moment with that curious dull agony, aching everywhere in
body and in brain. She kissed the rosebud once more and laid it gently
down in the wooden shoe. She did not see anything that was around her.
She felt a great dulness that closed in on her, a great weight that was
like iron on her head.

She thought she