To Bebee it was as an enchanted land, and every play of light and shade,
every hare speeding across the paths, every thrush singing in the leaves,
every little dog-rose or harebell that blossomed in the thickets, was to
her a treasure, a picture, a poem, a delight.
He had seen girls thus in the woods of Vincennes and of Versailles in the
student days of his youth: little work-girls fresh from chalets of the
Jura or from vine-hung huts of the Loire, who had brought their poor
little charms to perish in Paris; and who dwelt under the hot tiles and
amidst the gilded shop signs till they were as pale and thin as their own
starved balsams; and who, when they saw the green woods, laughed and
cried a little, and thought of the broad sun-swept fields, and wished
that they were back again behind their drove of cows, or weeding among
the green grapes.
But those little work-girls had been mere homely daisies, and daisies
already with the dust of the pavement and of the dancing-gardens upon
them.
Bebee was as pure and fresh as these dew-wet dog-roses that she found in
the thickets of thorn.
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