r.

"No," she answered him. "It comes into my head of itself. Sometimes I
think the cathedral angels put it there. For the angels must be tired,
you know; always pointing to God and always seeing men turn away. I used
to tell Antoine sometimes. But he used to shake his head and say that it
was no use thinking; most likely Ste. Gudule and St. Michael had set the
church down in the night all ready made--why not? God made the trees,
and they were more wonderful, he thought, for his part. And so perhaps
they are, but that is no answer. And I do _want_ to know. I want some
one who will tell me,--and if you come out of Rubes' country as I think,
no doubt you know everything, or remember it?"

He smiled.

* * *

The Sun came and touched the lichens of the roof into gold.

Bebee smiled at it gaily as it rose above the tops of the trees, and
shone on all the little villages scattered over the plains.

"Ah, dear Sun!" she cried to it. "I am going to be wise. I am going into
great Rubes' country. I am going to hear of the Past and the Future. I
am going to listen to what the Poets say. The swallows never would tell
me anything; but now I shall know as much as they know. Are you not glad
for me, O Sun?"

The Sun came over the trees, and heard and said nothing. If he had
answered at all he must have said:--

"The only time when a human soul is either wise or happy, is in that one
single moment when the hour of my own shining or of the moon's beaming
seems to that single soul to be past and present and future, to be at
once the creation and the end of all things. Faust knew that; so will
you."

But the Sun shone on and held his peace. He sees all things ripen and
fall. He can wait. He knows the end. It is always the same.

He brings the fruit out of the peach-flower, and rounds it and touches
it into ruddiest rose and softest gold; but the sun knows well that the
peach must drop--whether into the basket to be eaten by kings, or on to
the turf to be eaten by ants. What matter which very much after all?

The Sun is not a cynic; he is only wise because he is Life and He is
death, the creator and the corrupter of all things.

* * *

"And where are you going so fast, as if those wooden shoes of yours were
sandals of mercury?"

"Mercury--is that a shoemaker?"

"No, my dear. He did a terrible bit of cobbling once, when he made
Woman. But he did not shoe her feet with swiftness that I