After all she was Bebee—­the little bright blithe thing that had danced with their children, and sung to their singing, and brought them always the first roses of the year.  If she had been led astray, they should have been gentler with her.

So they told themselves and each other.

What had she seen in that terrible Paris to change her like this?—­they could not tell She never spoke.

The cock crowed gayly to the sun.  The lamb bleated in the meadow.  The bees boomed among the pear-tree blossoms.  The gray lavender blew in the open house door.  The green leaves threw shifting shadows on the floor.

All things were just the same as they had been the year before, when she had woke to the joy of being a girl of sixteen.

But Bebee now lay quite still and silent on her little bed; as quiet as the waxen Gesu that they laid in the manger at the Nativity.

“If she would only speak!” the women and the children wailed, weeping sorely.

But she never spoke; nor did she seem to know any one of them.  Not even the starling as he flew on her pillow and called her.

“Give her rest,” they all said; and one by one moved away, being poor folk and hard working, and unable to lose a whole day.

Mere Krebs stayed with her, and Jeannot sat in the porch where her little spinning-wheel stood, and rocked himself to and fro; in vain agony, powerless.

He had done all he could, and it was of no avail.

Then people who had loved her, hearing, came up the green lanes from the city—­the cobbler and the tinman, and the old woman who sold saints’ pictures by the Broodhuis.  The Varnhart children hung about the garden wicket, frightened and sobbing.  Old Jehan beat his knees with his hands, and said only over and over again, “Another dead—­another dead!—­the red mill and I see them all dead!”

The long golden day drifted away, and the swans swayed to and fro, and the willows grew silver in the sunshine.

Bebee, only, lay quite still and never spoke.  The starling sat above her head; his wings drooped, and he was silent too.

Towards sunset Bebee raised herself and called aloud:  they ran to her.

“Get me a rosebud—­one with the moss round it,” she said to them.

They went out into the garden, and brought her one wet with dew.

She kissed it, and laid it in one of her little wooden shoes that stood upon the bed.

“Send them to him,” she said wearily; “tell him I walked all the way.”

Then her head drooped; then momentary consciousness died out:  the old dull lifeless look crept over her face again like the shadow of death.

The starling spread his broad black wings above her head.  She lay quite still once more.  The women left the rosebud in the wooden shoe, not knowing what she meant.

Night fell.  Mere Krebs watched beside her.  Jeannot went down to the old church to beseech heaven with all his simple, ignorant, tortured soul.  The villagers hovered about, talking in low sad voices, and wondering, and dropping one by one into their homes.  They were sorry, very sorry; but what could they do?