I do not tell them every time I pray--it will be
like being silent about that--it will be no more wrong than that."
But there was a touch of anxiety in the words; she was not quite certain;
she wanted to be reassured. Instinct moved her not to speak of him; but
habit made it seem wrong to her to have any secret from the people who
had been about her from her birth.
He did not reassure her; her anxiety was pretty to watch, and he left the
trouble in her heart like a bee in the chalice of a lily. Besides, the
little wicket gate was between them; he was musing whether he would push
it open once more.
Her fate was in the balance, though she did not dream it: he had dealt
with her tenderly, honestly, sacredly all that day--almost as much so as
stupid Jeannot could have done. He had been touched by her trust in him,
and by the unconscious beauty of her fancies, into a mood that was unlike
all his life and habits. But after all, he said to himself--
After all!--
Where he stood in the golden evening he saw the rosy curled mouth, the
soft troubled eves, the little brown hands that still tried to fasten
the rosebud, the young peach-like skin where the wind stirred the
bodice;--she was only a little Flemish peasant, this poor little Bebee, a
little thing of the fields and the streets, for all the dreams of God
that abode with her.
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