It was as Jeannot kissed his sister Marie, who was fifteen years old and
sold milk for the Krebs people in the villages with a little green cart
and a yellow dog--no more.
And yet the sunny arbor leaves and the glimpse of the blue sky swam round
her indistinctly, and the sounds of the guitar grew dull upon her ear and
were lost as in a rushing hiss of water, because of the great sudden
unintelligible happiness that seemed to bear her little life away on it
as a sea wave bears a young child off its feet.
"You do not feel alone now, Bebee?" he whispered to her.
"No!" she answered him softly under her breath, and sat still, while all
her body quivered like a leaf.
No; how could she ever be alone now that this sweet, soft, unutterable
touch would always be in memory upon her; how could she wish ever again
now to be the corn-crake in the summer corn or the gray mouse in the
hedge of hawthorn?
At that moment a student went by past the entrance of the arbor; he had a
sash round his loins and a paper feather in his cap; he was playing a
fife and dancing; he glanced in as he went.
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