Whoever recollects an outside world may play with passion, or may idle with sentiment, but does not love.
She did not hear what the villagers said to her. She did not see the streets of the towns as she passed them. She kept herself clean always, and broke fast now and then by sheer instinct of habit, nothing more. She had no perception what she did, except of walking—walking—walking always, and seeing the white road go by like pale ribbons unrolled.
She got a dreamy, intense, sleepless light in her blue eyes that frightened some of those she passed. They thought she had been fever-stricken, and was not in her senses.
So she went across the dreary lowlands, wearing out her little sabots, but not wearing out her patience and her courage.
She was very dusty and jaded. Her woollen skirt was stained with weather and torn with briers. But she had managed always to wash her cap white in brook water, and she had managed always to keep her pretty bright curls soft and silken—for he had liked them so much, and he would soon draw them through his hand again. So she told herself a thousand times to give her strength when the mist would come over her sight, and the earth would seem to tremble as she went. On the fifteenth day from the night when she had left her hut by the swans' water, Bébée saw Paris.
Shining away in the sun; white and gold; among woods and gardens she saw
Paris.
She was so tired—oh, so tired—but she could not rest now. There were bells ringing always in her ears, and a heavy pain always in her head. But what of that?—she was so near to him.
"Are you ill, you little thing?" a woman asked her who was gathering early cherries in the outskirts of the great city.
Bébée looked at her and smiled: "I do not know—I am happy."
And she went onward.