are true children, and women are their rosebuds.

Thinking only of keeping well with this strange and beautiful wayfarer
from that unknown paradise of Rubes' country, Bebee lifted up the
vine-leaves of her basket.

"I took a flower for you to-day, but it is dead. Look; to-morrow, if you
will be there, you shall have the best in all the garden."

"You wish to see me again then?" he asked her. Bebee looked at him with
troubled eyes, but with a sweet frank faith that had no hesitation in it.

"Yes! you are not like anything I ever knew, and if you will only help me
to learn a little. Sometimes I think I am not stupid, only ignorant; but
I cannot be sure unless I try."

He smiled; he was listlessly amused; the day before he had tempted the
child merely because she was pretty, and to tempt her in that way seemed
the natural course of things, but now there was something in her that
touched him differently; the end would be the same, but he would change
the means.

The sun had set. There was a low, dull red glow still on the far edge of
the plains--that was all. In the distant cottages little lights were
twinkling. The path grew dark.

"I will go away and let her alone," he thought. "Poor little soul! it
would give itself lavishly, it would never be bought. I will let it
alone; the mind will go to sleep and the body will keep healthy, and
strong, and pure, as people call it. It would be a pity to play with both
a day, and then throw them away as the boy threw the pear-blossom. She
is a little clod of earth that has field flowers growing in it. I will
let her alone, the flowers under the plough in due course will die, and
she will be content among the other clods,--if I let her alone."

At that moment there went across the dark fields, against the dusky red
sky, a young man with a pile of brushwood on his back, and a hatchet in
his hand.

"You are late, Bebee," he called to her in Flemish, and scowled at the
stranger by her side.

"A good-looking lad; who is it?" said her companion.

"That is Jeannot, the son of old Sophie," she answered him. "He is so
good--oh, so good, you cannot think; he keeps his mother and three little
sisters, and works so very, very hard in the forest, and yet he often
finds time to dig my garden for me, and he chops all my wood in winter."

They had come to where the road goes up by the king's summer palace. They
were under great hanging beeches and limes. There was a high gray wall,
and