oever recollects an outside world may play with passion, or may idle
with sentiment, but does not love.

She did not hear what the villagers said to her. She did not see the
streets of the towns as she passed them. She kept herself clean always,
and broke fast now and then by sheer instinct of habit, nothing more. She
had no perception what she did, except of walking--walking--walking
always, and seeing the white road go by like pale ribbons unrolled.

She got a dreamy, intense, sleepless light in her blue eyes that
frightened some of those she passed. They thought she had been
fever-stricken, and was not in her senses.

So she went across the dreary lowlands, wearing out her little sabots,
but not wearing out her patience and her courage.

She was very dusty and jaded. Her woollen skirt was stained with weather
and torn with briers. But she had managed always to wash her cap white in
brook water, and she had managed always to keep her pretty bright curls
soft and silken--for he had liked them so much, and he would soon draw
them through his hand again. So she told herself a thousand times to give
her strength when the mist would come over her sight, and the earth would
seem to tremble as she went. On the fifteenth day from the night when she
had left her hut by the swans' water, Bebee saw Paris.

Shining away in the sun; white and gold; among woods and gardens she saw
Paris.

She was so tired--oh, so tired--but she could not rest now. There were
bells ringing always in her ears, and a heavy pain always in her head.
But what of that?--she was so near to him.

"Are you ill, you little thing?" a woman asked her who was gathering
early cherries in the outskirts of the great city.

Bebee looked at her and smiled: "I do not know--I am happy."

And she went onward.

It was evening. The sun had set. She had not eaten for twenty-four hours.
But she could not pause for anything now. She crossed the gleaming river,
and she heard the cathedral chimes. Paris in all its glory was about her,
but she took no more note of it than a pigeon that flies through it
intent on reaching home.

No one looked at or stopped her; a little dusty peasant with a bundle on
a stick over her shoulder.

The click-clack of her wooden shoes on the hot pavements made none look
up; little rustics came up every day like this to make their fortunes in
Paris. Some grew into golden painted silken flowers, the convolvuli of
their brief summer days;