caissons crawl black as a snake through the summer dust and the
trampled corn, going out past the woods to Waterloo.

But to-night she had no fancy for it: she wanted to be alone with the
flowers.

Though, to be sure, they had been very heartless when Antoine's coffin
had gone past them, still they had sympathy; the daisies smiled at her
with their golden eyes, and the roses dropped tears on her hand, just as
her mood might be; the flowers were closer friends, after all, than any
human souls; and besides, she could say so much to them!

Flowers belong to fairyland; the flowers and the birds and the
butterflies are all that the world has kept of its Golden Age; the only
perfectly beautiful things on earth, joyous, innocent, half divine,
useless, say they who are wiser than God.

Bébée went home and worked among her flowers.

A little laborious figure, with her petticoats twisted high, and her feet
wet with the night dews, and her back bowed to the hoeing and clipping
and raking among the blossoming plants.

"How late you are working to-night, Bébée!" one or two called out, as
they passed the gate. She looked up and smiled; but went on working while
the white moon rose.

She did not know what ailed her.

She went to bed without supper, leaving her bit of bread and bowl of