"What a queer speech of Aunt Jeanne's!" thought Victorine at her
casement window. "What a fool I was to have said anything about Father
Anselmo! Poor fellow! I wonder why he doesn't run away from the
monastery!"



II.


The south wind's secret, when it blows,
Oh, what man knows?
How did it turn the rose's bud
Into a rose?
What went before, no garden shows;
Only the rose!

What hour the bitter north wind blows,
The south wind knows.
Why did it turn the rose's bud
Into a rose?
Alas, to-day the garden shows
A dying rose!


Jeanne had not to wait long. It was only a few days after this
conversation with Victorine,--the big pear-tree was still snowy-white
with bloom, and the tireless bees still buzzed thick among its
boughs,--when Jeanne, standing in the doorway at sunset, saw two riders