“No. you do not know,” said he, with a sort of pity; and thought within himself, was it worth while to let her know?

If she did not know, these vague aspirations and imaginations would drop off from her with the years of her early youth, as the lime-flowers drop downwards with the summer heats.  She would forget them.  They would linger a little in her head, and, perhaps, always wake at some sunset hour or some angelus chime, but not to trouble her.  Only to make her cradle song a little sadder and softer than most women’s was.  Unfed, they would sink away and bear no blossom.

She would grow into a simple, hardy, hardworking, God-fearing Flemish woman like the rest.  She would marry, no doubt, some time, and rear her children honestly and well; and sit in the market stall every day, and spin and sew, and dig and wash, and sweep, and brave bad weather, and be content with poor food to the end of her harmless and laborious days—­poor little Bebee!

He saw her so clearly as she would be—­if he let her alone.

A little taller, a little broader, a little browner, less sweet of voice, less soft of skin, less flower-like in face; having learned to think only as her neighbors thought, of price of wood and cost of bread; laboring cheerily but hardly from daybreak to nightfall to fill hungry mouths:  forgetting all things except the little curly-heads clustered round her soup-pot, and the year-old lips sucking at her breasts.

A blameless life, an eventless life, a life as clear as the dewdrop, and as colorless; a life opening, passing, ending in the little green wooded lane, by the bit of water where the swans made their nests under the willows; a life like the life of millions, a little purer, a little brighter, a little more tender, perhaps, than those lives usually are, but otherwise as like them as one ear of barley is like another as it rises from the soil, and blows in the wind, and turns brown in the strong summer sun, and then goes down to the sod again under the sickle.

He saw her just as she would be—­if he let her alone.

But should he leave her alone?

He cared nothing; only her eyes had such a pretty, frank, innocent look like a bird’s in them, and she had been so brave and bold with him about those silken stockings; and this little ignorant, dreamful mind of hers was so like a blush rosebud, which looks so close-shut, and so sweet-smelling, and so tempting fold within fold, that a child will pull it open, forgetful that he will spoil it forever from being a full-grown rose, and that he will let the dust, and the sun, and the bee into its tender bosom—­and men are true children, and women are their rosebuds.

Thinking only of keeping well with this strange and beautiful wayfarer from that unknown paradise of Rubes’ country, Bebee lifted up the vine-leaves of her basket.

“I took a flower for you to-day, but it is dead.  Look; to-morrow, if you will be there, you shall have the best in all the garden.”