He had meant to treat her as he had used to do those work-girls--a little
wine, a little wooing, a little folly and passion, idle as a butterfly
and brief as a rainbow--one midsummer day and night--then a handful of
gold, a caress, a good-morrow, and forgetfulness ever afterwards--that
was what he had meant when he had brought her out to the forest of
Soignies.
But--she was different, this child.
He made the great sketch of her for his Gretchen, sitting on a moss-grown
trunk, with marguerites in her hand; he sent for their breakfast far into
the woods, and saw her set her pearly teeth into early peaches and costly
sweetmeats; he wandered with her hither and thither, and told her tales
out of the poets and talked to her in the dreamy, cynical, poetical
manner that was characteristic of him, being half artificial and half
sorrowful, as his temper was.
But Bebee, all unconscious, intoxicated with happiness, and yet touched
by it into that vague sadness which the summer sun brings with it even to
young things, if they have soul in them,--Bebee said to him what the
work-girls of Paris never had done.
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