re, were for the first time arrayed before
her in their ghastly and unending warfare.

It frightened her with a certain breathless sense of peril--the peril of
a time when in lieu of that gentle Mother of Roses whom she kneeled
to among the flowers, she would only see a dusky shadow looming between
her and the beauty of life and the light of the sun.

What he said was quite vague to her. She attached no definite danger to
his words. She only thought--to see him was so great a joy--if Mary
forbade it, would she not take it if she could notwithstanding, always,
always, always?

He kept her hand in his, and watched with contentment the changing play
of the shade and sorrow, the fear and fascination, on her face.

"You do not know, Bebee?" he said at length, knowing well himself; so
much better than ever she knew. "Well, dear, that is not flattering to
me. But it is natural. The good Virgin of course gives you all you have,
food, and clothes, and your garden, and your pretty plump chickens; and I
am only a stranger. You could not offend her for me; that is not likely."

The child was cut to the heart by the sadness and humility of words of
whose studied artifice she had no suspicion.

She thought that she seemed to him ungrateful and selfish, and yet all
the mooring-ropes that held her little boat of life to the harbor of
its simple religion seemed cut away, and she seemed drifting helpless and
rudderless upon an unknown sea.

"I never did do wrong--that I know," she said, timidly, and lifted her
eyes to his with an unconscious appeal in them.

"But--I do not see why it should be wrong to speak with you. You are
good, and you lend me beautiful things out of other men's minds that will
make me less ignorant: Our Lady could not be angry with that--she must
like it."

"Our Lady?--oh, poor little simpleton!--where will her reign be when
Ignorance has once been cut down root and branch?" he thought to himself:
but he only answered,--

"But whether she like it or not, Bebee?--you beg the question, my dear;
you are--you are not so frank as usual--think, and tell me honestly?"

He knew quite well, but it amused him to see the perplexed trouble that
this, the first divided duty of her short years, brought with it.

Bebee looked at him, and loosened her hand from his, and sat quite still.
Her lips had a little quiver in them.

"I think." she said at last, "I think--if it _be_ wrong, still I will
wish it--yes. Only I wi