The golden gates of knowledge had just opened to her; she saw a faint, far-off glimpse of the Hesperides gardens within; of the dragon she had never heard, and had no fear.

“Might I know your name?” she had asked him wistfully, as she had given him the rosebud, and taken the volume in return that day.

“They call me Flamen.”

“It is your name?”

“Yes, for the world.  You must call me Victor, as other women do.  Why do you want my name?”

“Jeannot asked it of me.”

“Oh, Jeannot asked it, did he?”

“Yes; besides,” said Bebee, with her eyes very soft and very serious, and her happy voice hushed,—­“besides, I want to pray for you of course, every day; and if I do not know your name, how can I make Our Lady rightly understand?  The flowers know you without a name, but she might not, because so very many are always beseeching her, and you see she has all the world to look after.”

He had looked at her with a curious look, and had bade her farewell, and let her go home alone that night.

Her work was quickly done, and by the light of the moon she spread her book on her lap in the porch of the hut and began her new delight.

The children had come and pulled at her skirts and begged her to play.  But Bebee had shaken her head.

“I am going to learn to be very wise, dear,” she told them; “I shall not have time to dance or to play.”

“But people are not merry when they are wise, Bebee,” said Franz, the biggest boy.

“Perhaps not,” said Bebee:  “but one cannot be everything, you know, Franz.”

“But surely, you would rather be merry than anything else?”

“I think there is something better, Franz.  I am not sure; I want to find out; I will tell you when I know.”

“Who has put that into your head, Bebee?”

“The angels in the cathedral,” she told them; and the children were awed and left her, and went away to play blind-man’s-buff by themselves, on the grass by the swan’s water.

“But for all that the angels have said it,” said Franz to his sisters, “I cannot see what good it will be to her to be wise, if she will not care any longer afterwards for almond gingerbread and currant cake.”

It was the little tale of “Paul and Virginia” that he had given her to begin her studies with:  but it was a grand copy, full of beautiful drawings nearly at every page.

It was hard work for her to read at first, but the drawings enticed and helped her, and she soon sank breathlessly into the charm of the story.  Many words she did not know; many passages were beyond her comprehension; she was absolutely ignorant, and had nothing but the force of her own fancy to aid her.

But though stumbling at every step, as a lame child through a flowery hillside in summer, she was happy as the child would be, because of the sweet, strange air that was blowing about her, and the blossoms that she could gather into her hand, so rare, so wonderful, and yet withal so familiar, because they were blossoms.