ll not tell myself it is right. I will just say to
Our Lady, 'I am wicked, perhaps, but I cannot help it' So, I will not
deceive her at all; and perhaps in time she may forgive. But I think you
only say it to try me. It cannot, I am sure, be wrong--any more than it
is to talk to Jeannot or to Bac."

He had driven her into the subtleties of doubt, but the honest little
soul in her found a way out, as a flower in a cellar finds its way
through the stones to light.

He plucked the ivy leaves and threw them at the chickens on the bricks
without, with a certain impatience in the action. The simplicity and the
directness of the answer disarmed him; he was almost ashamed to use
against her the weapons of his habitual warfare. It was like a maitre
d'armes fencing with bare steel against a little naked child armed with a
blest palm-sheaf.

When she had thus brought him all she had, and he to please her had sat
down to the simple food, she gathered a spray of roses and set it in a
pot beside him, then left him and went and stood at a little distance,
waiting, with her hands lightly crossed on her chest, to see if there
were anything that he might want.

He ate and drank well to please her, looking at her often as he did so.

"I break your bread, Bebee," he said, with a tone that seemed strange to
her,--"I break your bread. I must keep Arab faith with you."

"What is that?"

"I mean--I must never betray you."

"Betray me How could you?"

"Well--hurt you in any way."

"Ah, I am sure you would never do that."

He was silent, and looked at the spray of roses.

"Sit down and spin," he said impatiently. "I am ashamed to see you stand
there, and a woman never looks so well as when she spins. Sit down, and I
will eat the good things you have brought me. But I cannot if you stand
and look."

"I beg your pardon. I did not know," she said, ashamed lest she should
have seemed rude to him; and she drew out her wheel under the light of
the lattice, and sat down to it, and began to disentangle the threads.

It was a pretty picture--the low, square casement; the frame of ivy, the
pink and white of the climbing sweet-peas: the girl's head; the cool, wet
leaves: the old wooden spinning-wheel, that purred like a sleepy cat.

"I want to paint you as Gretchen, only it will be a shame." he said.

"Who is Gretchen?"

"You shall read of her by-and-by. And you live here all by yourself?"

"Since Antoine died--yes."

"And are neve