That he spared her as far as he did,—­when after all she would have married Jeannot anyhow,—­and that he sketched her face in the open air, and never entered her hut and never beguiled her to his own old palace in the city, was a new virtue in himself for which he hardly knew whether to feel respect or ridicule; anyway, it seemed virtue to him.

So long as he did not seduce the body, it seemed to him that it could never matter how he slew the soul,—­the little, honest, happy, pure, frank soul, that amidst its poverty and hardships was like a robin’s song to the winter sun.

“Hoot, toot, pretty innocent, so you are no better than the rest of us,” hissed her enemy, Lisette, the fruit girl, against her as she went by the stall one evening as the sun set.  “Prut! so it was no such purity after all that made you never look at the student lads and the soldiers, eh?  You were so dainty of taste, you must needs pick and choose, and, Lord’s sake, after all your coyness, to drop at a beckoning finger as one may say—­pong!—­in a minute, like an apple over-ripe!  Oh he, you sly one!”

Bebee flushed red, in a sort of instinct of offence; not sure what her fault was, but vaguely stung by the brutal words.

Bebee walked homeward by him, with her empty baskets:  looked at him with grave wondering eyes.

“What did she mean?  I do not understand.  I must have done some wrong—­or she thinks so.  Do you know?”

Flamen laughed, and answered her evasively,—­

“You have done her the wrong of a fair skin when hers is brown, and a little foot while hers is as big as a trooper’s; there is no greater sin, Bebee, possible in woman to woman.”

“Hold your peace, you shrill jade,” he added, in anger to the fruiterer, flinging at her a crown piece, that the girl caught, and bit with her teeth with a chuckle.  “Do not heed her, Bebee.  She is a coarse-tongued brute, and is jealous, no doubt.”

“Jealous?—­of what?”

The word had no meaning to Bebee.

“That I am not a student or a soldier, as her lovers are.”

As her lovers were!  Bebee felt her face burn again.  Was he her lover then?  The child’s innocent body and soul thrilled with a hot, sweet delight and fear commingled.

Bebee was not quite satisfied until she had knelt down that night and asked the Master of all poor maidens to see if there were any wickedness in her heart, hidden there like a bee in a rose, and if there were to take it out and make her worthier of this wonderful new happiness in her life.

CHAPTER XIV.

The next day, waking with a radiant little soul as a bird in a forest wakes in summer Bebee was all alone in the lane by the swans’ water.  In the gray of the dawn all the good folk except herself and lame old Jehan had tramped off to a pilgrimage, Liege way, which the bishop of the city had enjoined on all the faithful as a sacred duty.