rise and rebuke one--that is why I would rather forget the flowers
for the Church than I would the flowers for his grave, because God can
punish me, of course, if he like, but Antoine never can--any more--now."

"You are logical in your sentiment, my dear," said Flamen, who was more
moved than he cared to feel. "The union is a rare one in your sex. Who
taught you to reason?"

"No one. And I do not know what to be logical means. Is it that you laugh
at me?"

"No. I do not laugh. And your pilgrims--they are gone for all day?"

"Yes. They are gone to the Sacred Heart at St. Marie en Bois. It is on
the way to Liege. They will come back at nightfall. And some of them will
be sure to have drunk too much, and the children will get so cross.
Prosper Bar, who is a Calvinist, always says, 'Do not mix up prayer and
play; you would not cut a gherkin in your honey'; but I do not know why
he called prayer a gherkin, because it is sweet enough--sweeter than
anything, I think. When I pray to the Virgin to let me see you next day,
I go to bed quite happy, because she will do it, I know, if it will be
good for me."

"But if it were not good for you, Bebee? Would you cease to wish it
then?"

He rose as he spoke, and went across the floor and drew away her hand
that was parting the flax, and took it in his own and stroked it,
indulgently and carelessly, as a man may stroke the soft fur of a young
cat.

Leaning against the little lattice and looking down on her with musing
eyes, half smiling, half serious, half amorous, half sad, Bebee looked
up with a sudden and delicious terror that ran through her as the charm
of the snake's gaze runs through the bewildered bird.

"Would you cease to wish it if it were not good?" he asked again.

Bebee's face grew pale and troubled. She left her hand in his because she
did not think any shame of his taking it. But the question suddenly flung
the perplexity and darkness of doubt into the clearness of her pure
child's conscience. All her ways had been straight and sunlit before her.

She had never had a divided duty.

The religion and the pleasure of her simple little life had always gone
hand-in-hand, greeting one another, and never for an instant in conflict.
In any hesitation of her own she had always gone to Father Francis, and
he had disentangled the web for her and made all plain.

But here was a difficulty in which she could never go to Father Francis.

Right and wrong, duty and desi