And now, as she grew nearer her goal, her natural buoyancy of spirit returned as it had never done to her since the evening that he had kissed and left her.  As her body grew lighter and more exhausted, her fancy grew keener and more dominant.  All things of the earth and air spoke to her as she went along as they had used to do.  All that she had learned from the books in the long cold months came to her clear and wonderful.  She was not so very ignorant now—­ignorant, indeed, beside him—­but still knowing something that would make her able to read to him if he liked it, and to understand if he talked of grave things.

She had no fixed thought of what she would be to him when she reached him.

She fancied she would wait on him, and tend him, and make him well, and be caressed by him, and get all gracious pretty things of leaf and blossom about him, and kneel at his feet, and be quite happy if he only touched her now and then with his lips;—­her thoughts went no further than that;—­her love for him was of that intensity and absorption in which nothing But itself is remembered.

When a creature loves much, even when it is as little and as simple a soul as Bebee, the world and all its people and all its laws and ways are as naught.  They cease to exist; they are as though they had never been.

Whoever recollects an outside world may play with passion, or may idle with sentiment, but does not love.

She did not hear what the villagers said to her.  She did not see the streets of the towns as she passed them.  She kept herself clean always, and broke fast now and then by sheer instinct of habit, nothing more.  She had no perception what she did, except of walking—­walking—­walking always, and seeing the white road go by like pale ribbons unrolled.

She got a dreamy, intense, sleepless light in her blue eyes that frightened some of those she passed.  They thought she had been fever-stricken, and was not in her senses.

So she went across the dreary lowlands, wearing out her little sabots, but not wearing out her patience and her courage.

She was very dusty and jaded.  Her woollen skirt was stained with weather and torn with briers.  But she had managed always to wash her cap white in brook water, and she had managed always to keep her pretty bright curls soft and silken—­for he had liked them so much, and he would soon draw them through his hand again.  So she told herself a thousand times to give her strength when the mist would come over her sight, and the earth would seem to tremble as she went.  On the fifteenth day from the night when she had left her hut by the swans’ water, Bebee saw Paris.

Shining away in the sun; white and gold; among woods and gardens she saw Paris.

She was so tired—­oh, so tired—­but she could not rest now.  There were bells ringing always in her ears, and a heavy pain always in her head.  But what of that?—­she was so near to him.