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.