"Might I know your name?" she had asked him wistfully, as she had given him the rosebud, and taken the volume in return that day.
"They call me Flamen."
"It is your name?"
"Yes, for the world. You must call me Victor, as other women do. Why do you want my name?"
"Jeannot asked it of me."
"Oh, Jeannot asked it, did he?"
"Yes; besides," said Bébée, with her eyes very soft and very serious, and her happy voice hushed,—"besides, I want to pray for you of course, every day; and if I do not know your name, how can I make Our Lady rightly understand? The flowers know you without a name, but she might not, because so very many are always beseeching her, and you see she has all the world to look after."
He had looked at her with a curious look, and had bade her farewell, and let her go home alone that night.
Her work was quickly done, and by the light of the moon she spread her book on her lap in the porch of the hut and began her new delight.
The children had come and pulled at her skirts and begged her to play.
But Bébée had shaken her head.