over it the blossoming fruit boughs hung. In a ditch full of long
grass little kids bleated by their mothers. Away on the left went the
green fields of colza, and beetroot, and trefoil, with big forest trees
here and there in their midst, and, against the blue low line of the far
horizon, red mill-sails, and gray church spires; dreamy plaintive bells
far away somewhere were ringing the sad Flemish carillon.

He paused and looked at her.

"I must bid you good night, Bebee; you are near your home now."

She paused too and looked at him.

"But I shall see you to-morrow?"

There was the wistful, eager, anxious unconsciousness of appeal as when
the night before she had asked him if he were angry.

He hesitated a moment. If he said no, and went away out of the city
wherever his listless and changeful whim called him, he knew how it would
be with her; he knew what her life would be as surely as he knew the
peach would come out of the peach-flower rosy on the wall there: life in
the little hut; among the neighbors; sleepy and safe and soulless;--if he
let her alone.

If he stayed and saw her on the morrow he knew, too, the end as surely as
he knew that the branch of white pear-blossom, which in carelessness he
had knocked down with a stone on the grass yonder, would fade in the
night and would never bring forth its sweet, simple fruit in the
sunshine.

To leave the peach-flower to come to maturity and be plucked by a
peasant, or to pull down the pear-blossom and rifle the buds?

Carelessly and languidly he balanced the question with himself, whilst
Bebee, forgetful of the lace patterns and the flight of the hours, stood
looking at him with anxious and pleading eyes, thinking only--was he
angry again, or would he really bring her the books and make her wise,
and let her know the stories of the past?

"Shall I see you to-morrow?" she said wistfully.

Should she?--if he left the peach-blossom safe on the wall, Jeannot the
woodcutter would come by and by and gather the fruit.

If he left the clod of earth in its pasture with all its daisies
untouched, this black-browed young peasant would cut it round with his
hatchet and carry it to his wicker cage, that the homely brown lark of
his love might sing to it some stupid wood note under a cottage eave.

The sight of the strong young forester going over the darkened fields
against the dull red skies was as a feather that suffices to sway to one
side a balance that hangs