There was so much that she might
do; her fancy played with it almost happily. And then, only to touch his
hand, only to hear his voice; her heart rose at the thought, as a lark to
its morning song.
At Rixensart, buried in its greenery, as she went through it in morning
light, some peasants greeted her cheerily, and called to her to rest in a
house porch, and gave her honey and bread. She could not eat much; her
tongue was parched and her throat was dry, but the kindness was precious
to her, and she went on her road the stronger for it.
"It is a long way to walk to Paris," said the woman, with some curious
wonder. Bebee smiled, though her eyes grew wet.
"She has the look of the little Gesu," said the Rixensart people; and
they watched her away with a vague timid pity.
So she went on through Ottignies and La Roche to Villers, and left the
great woods and the city chimes behind her, and came through the green
abbey valleys through Tilly and Ligny, and Fleurus, and so into the coal
and iron fields that lie round Charleroi.
Here her heart grew sick, and her courage sank under the noise and the
haste, before the blackness and the hideousness.
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