The women whom Jeannot summoned, his mother and sisters, and Mère Krebs, and one or two others, weeping for what had been the hardness of their hearts against her, undressed her, and laid her down on her little bed, and opened the shutters to the radiance of the sun.
She let them do as they liked, only she seemed neither to hear nor speak, and she never spoke.
All that Jeannot could tell was that he had found her in Paris, and had saved her from the river.
The women were sorrowful, and reproached themselves. Perhaps she had done wrong, but they had been harsh, and she was so young.
The two little sabots with the holes worn through the soles touched them; and they blamed themselves for having shut their hearts and their doors against her as they saw the fixed blue eyes, without any light in them, and the pretty mouth closed close against either sob or smile.
After all she was Bébée—the little bright blithe thing that had danced with their children, and sung to their singing, and brought them always the first roses of the year. 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.