"
She spoke quite quietly and simply, spinning as she spoke, and looking
across at him with earnest eyes, that begged him to believe her. She was
saying the pure truth, but she did not know the force or the meaning of
that truth.
He listened with a smile; it was not new to him; he knew her heart much
better than she knew it herself, but there was an unconsciousness, and
yet a strength, in the words that touched him though.
He threw the leaves away, irritably, and told her to leave off her
spinning.
"Some day I shall paint you with that wheel as I painted the Broodhuis.
Will you let me, Bebee?"
"Yes."
She answered him as she would have answered if he had told her to go on
pilgrimage from one end of the Low Countries to the other.
"What were you going to do to-day?"
"I am going into the market with the flowers; I go every day."
"How much will you make?"
"Two or three francs, if I am lucky."
"And do you never have a holiday?"
"Oh, yes; but not often, you know, because it is on the fete days that
the people want the most flowers."
"But in the winter?"
"Then I work at the lace.
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