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ving 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 cherie, 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 quarter, the stone-yard of the cathedral; but there was no visible worshipper--nothing to interrupt her mood of reverie. For a long while, that is. Presently chimed in with the music of chisel and mallet the ring of eager young footsteps outside, young men's footsteps, voices and dear English speech. One was freely translating from his guide-book: "The cathedral, many times destroyed, was rebuilt after the fire of 1106, and not completed until the eighteenth century. It is therefore of several styles. The length is one hundred and two metres and the height twenty-three metres from floor to vault." Bessie's breath came and went very fast; so did the blood in her cheeks. Surely that voice she knew. It was Harry Musgrave's voice, and this was why thoughts of the Forest had haunted her all the morning. The owner of the voice entered, and it was Harry Musgrave--he and two others, all with the fresh air of British tourists not long starte
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