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 daisy tells of to your sex."
"No?"
"No; the girls that you see count the flowers--they are thinking, not of
all the village, but of some one unlike all the rest, whose shadow falls
across theirs in the moonlight! You know that?"
"Ah, yes--and they marry afterwards--yes."
She said it softly, musingly, with no embarrassment; it was an unreal,
remote thing to her, and yet it stirred her heart a little with a vague
trouble that was infinitely sweet.
There is little talk of love in the lives of the poor; they have no space
for it; love to them means more mouths to feed, more wooden shoes to buy,
more hands to dive into the meagre bag of coppers. Now and then a girl
of the commune had been married, and had ploughing in the fields or to
her lace-weaving in the city. Bebee had thought little of it.
"They marry or they do not marry. That is as it may be," said Flamen,
with a smile.
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