So he left the street of Mary of Burgundy, and went on his way out of the
chiming city as its matin bells were rung, and took with him a certain
regret, and the only innocent affection that had ever awakened in him;
and thought of his self-negation with half admiration and half derision;
and so drifted away into the whirlpool of his amorous, cynical,
changeful, passionate, callous, many-colored life, and said to himself as
he saw the last line of the low green plains shine against the sun, "She
will marry Jeannot--of course, she will marry Jeannot. And my Gretchen is
greater than Scheffer's."
What else mattered very much, after all, except what they would say in
Paris of Gretchen?
CHAPTER XXII.
People saw that Bebee had grown very quiet. But that was all they saw.
Her little face was pale as she sat among her glowing autumn blossoms, by
the side of the cobbler's stall; and when the Varnhart children cried at
the gate to her to come and play, she would answer gently that she was
too busy to have play-time now.
The fruit girl of the Montagne de la Cour hooted after her, "Gone so
soon?--oh he! what did I say?--a fine pine is sugar in the teeth a second
only, but the brown nuts you may crack all the seasons round.
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