But Bebee flew down through the empty chambers and the long stairway as a hare flies from the hounds; her tired feet never paused, her aching limbs never slackened; she ran on, and on, and on, into the lighted streets, into the fresh night air; on, and on, and on, straight to the river.

From its brink some man’s strength caught and held her.  She struggled with it.

“Let me die! let me die!” she shrieked to him, and strained from him to get at the cool gray silent water that waited for her there.

Then she lost all consciousness, and saw the stars no more.

When she came back to any sense of life, the stars were shining still, and the face of Jeannot was bending over her, wet with tears.

He had followed her to Paris when they had missed her first, and had come straight by train to the city, making sure it was thither she had come, and there had sought her many days, watching for her by the house of Flamen.

She shuddered away from him as he held her, and looked at him with blank, tearless eyes.

“Do not touch me—­take me home.”

That was all she ever said to him.  She never asked him or told him anything.  She never noticed that it was strange that he should have been here upon the river-bank.  He let her be, and took her silently in the cool night back by the iron ways to Brabant.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

She sat quite still and upright in the wagon with the dark lands rushing by her.  She never spoke at all.  She had a look that frightened him upon her face.  When he tried to touch her hand, she shivered away from him.

The charcoal-burner, hardy and strong among forest-reared men, cowered like a child in a corner, and covered his eyes and wept.

So the night wore away.

She had no perception of anything that happened to her until she was led through her own little garden in the early day, and her starling cried to her, “Bonjour, Bonjour!” Even then she only looked about her in a bewildered way, and never spoke.

Were the sixteen days a dream?

She did not know.

The women whom Jeannot summoned, his mother and sisters, and Mere Krebs, and one or two others, weeping for what had been the hardness of their hearts against her, undressed her, and laid her down on her little bed, and opened the shutters to the radiance of the sun.

She let them do as they liked, only she seemed neither to hear nor speak, and she never spoke.

All that Jeannot could tell was that he had found her in Paris, and had saved her from the river.

The women were sorrowful, and reproached themselves.  Perhaps she had done wrong, but they had been harsh, and she was so young.

The two little sabots with the holes worn through the soles touched them; and they blamed themselves for having shut their hearts and their doors against her as they saw the fixed blue eyes, without any light in them, and the pretty mouth closed close against either sob or smile.