And now and then even the loyal little soul of her gave way, and sobbing on her lonely bed in the long dark nights, she would cry out against him, “Oh, why not have left me alone?  I was so happy—­so happy!”

And then she would reproach herself with treason to him and ingratitude, and hate herself and feel guilty in her own sight to have thus sinned against him in thought for one single instant.

For there are natures in which the generosity of love is so strong that it feels its own just pain to be disloyalty; and Bebee’s was one of them.  And if he had killed her she would have died hoping only that no moan had escaped her under the blow that ever could accuse him.

These natures, utterly innocent by force of self-accusation and self-abasement, suffer at once the torment of the victim and the criminal.

CHAPTER XXVI.

One day in the May weather she sat within doors with a great book upon her table, but no sight for it in her aching eyes.  The starling hopped to and fro on the sunny floor; the bees boomed in the porch; the tinkle of sheep’s bells came in on the stillness.  All was peaceful and happy except the little weary, breaking, desolate heart that beat in her like a caged bird’s.

“He will come; I am sure he will come,” she said to herself; but she was so tired, and it was so long—­oh, dear God!—­so very long.

A hand tapped at the lattice.  The shrill voice of Reine, the sabot-maker’s wife, broken with anguish, called through the hanging ivy,—­

“Bebee, you are a wicked one, they say, but the only one there is at home in the village this day.  Get you to town for the love of Heaven, and send Doctor Max hither, for my pet, my flower, my child lies dying, and not a soul near, and she black as a coal with choking—­go, go, go!—­and Mary will forgive you your sins.  Save the little one, dear Bebee, do you hear? and I will pray God and speak fair the neighbors for you.  Go!”

Bebee rose up, startled by the now unfamiliar sound of a human voice, and looked at the breathless mother with eyes of pitying wonder.

“Surely I will go,” she said, gently; “but there is no need to bribe me.  I have not sinned greatly—­that I know.”

Then she went out quickly and ran through the lanes and into the city for the sick child, and found the wise man, and sent him, and did the errand rather in a sort of sorrowful sympathetic instinct than in any reasoning consciousness of doing good.

When she was moving through the once familiar and happy ways as the sun was setting on the golden fronts of the old houses, and the chimes were ringing from the many towers, a strange sense of unreality, of non-existence, fell upon her.

Could it be she?—­she indeed—­who had gone there the year before the gladdest thing that the earth bore, with no care except to shelter her flowers from the wind, and keep the freshest blossoms for the burgomaster’s housewife?