They were under great hanging beeches and limes.

There was a high gray wall, and over it the blossoming fruit boughs hung.

In a ditch full of long grass little kids bleated by their mothers.

Away on the left went the green fields of colza, and beetroot, and trefoil, with big forest trees here and there in their midst, and, against the blue low line of the far horizon, red mill-sails, and gray church spires; dreamy plaintive bells far away somewhere were ringing the sad Flemish carillon.
He paused and looked at her.
"I must bid you good night, Bebee; you are near your home now." She paused too and looked at him.
"But I shall see you to-morrow ?" There was the wistful, eager, anxious unconsciousness of appeal as when the night before she had asked him if he were angry.
He hesitated a moment.

If he said no, and went away out of the city wherever his listless and changeful whim called him, he knew how it would be with her; he knew what her life would be as surely as he knew the peach would come out of the peach-flower rosy on the wall there: life in the little hut; among the neighbors; sleepy and safe and soulless;--if he let her alone.
If he stayed and saw her on the morrow he knew, too, the end as surely as he knew that the branch of white pear-blossom, which in carelessness he had knocked down with a stone on the grass yonder, would fade in the night and would never bring forth its sweet, simple fruit in the sunshine.
To leave the peach-flower to come to maturity and be plucked by a peasant, or to pull down the pear-blossom and rifle the buds?
Carelessly and languidly he balanced the question with himself, whilst Bebee, forgetful of the lace patterns and the flight of the hours, stood looking at him with anxious and pleading eyes, thinking only--was he angry again, or would he really bring her the books and make her wise, and let her know the stories of the past?
"Shall I see you to-morrow ?" she said wistfully.
Should she ?--if he left the peach-blossom safe on the wall, Jeannot the woodcutter would come by and by and gather the fruit.
If he left the clod of earth in its pasture with all its daisies untouched, this black-browed young peasant would cut it round with his hatchet and carry it to his wicker cage, that the homely brown lark of his love might sing to it some stupid wood note under a cottage eave.
The sight of the strong young forester going over the darkened fields against the dull red skies was as a feather that suffices to sway to one side a balance that hangs on a hair.
He had been inclined to leave her alone when he saw in his fancy the clean, simple, mindless, honest life that her fanciful girlhood would settle down into as time should go on.