ght divine that
does shine now and then as through an alabaster lamp, through minds that
have no grossness to obscure them.

Her words were not equal to the burden of her thoughts at times, but he
knew how to take the pearl of the thought from the broken shell and
tangled sea-weed of her simple, untutored speech.

"If there be a God anywhere," he thought to himself, "this little Fleming
is very near him."

She was so near that, although he had no belief in any God, he could not
deal with her as he had used to do with the work-girls in the primrose
paths of old Vincennes.

CHAPTER XVI.

"To be Gretchen, you must count the leaves of your daisies," he said to
her, as he painted,--painted her just as she was, with her two little
white feet in the wooden shoes, and the thick green leaves behind; the
simplest picture possible, the dress of gray--only cool dark gray--with
white linen bodice, and no color anywhere except in the green of the
foliage; but where he meant the wonder and the charm of it to lie was in
the upraised, serious, child-like face, and the gaze of the grave,
smiling eyes.

It was Gretchen, spinning, out in the open air among the flowers.
Gretchen, with the tall dog-daisies growing up about her feet, among
the thyme and the roses, before she had had need to gather, one to ask
her future of its parted leaves.

The Gretchen of Scheffer tells no tale; she is a fair-haired,
hard-working, simple-minded peasant, with whom neither angels nor devils
have anything to do, and whose eyes never can open to either hell or
heaven. But the Gretchen of Flamen said much more than this: looking
at it, men would sigh from shame, and women weep from sorrow.

"Count the daisies?" echoed Bebee. "Oh, I know what you mean. A
little--much--passionately--until death--not at all. What the girls say
when they want to see if any one loves them? Is that it?"

She looked at him without any consciousness, except as she loved the
flowers.

"Do you think the daisies know?" she went on, seriously, parting their
petals with her fingers. "Flowers do know many things--that is certain."

"Ask them for yourself."

"Ask them what?"

"How much--any one--loves you?"

"Oh, but every one loves me; there is no one that is bad. Antoine used to
say to me. 'Never think of yourself, Bebee; always think of other people,
so every one will love you.' And I always try to do that, and every one
does."

"But that is not the love the da