He looked at her earnestly; her eyes were shining, her cheeks were warm, her little mouth was tremulous with eagerness.
"Did any one ever speak to you in that way?" he asked her.
"No," she answered him. "It comes into my head of itself. Sometimes I think the cathedral angels put it there. For the angels must be tired, you know; always pointing to God and always seeing men turn away. I used to tell Antoine sometimes. But he used to shake his head and say that it was no use thinking; most likely Ste. Gudule and St. Michael had set the church down in the night all ready made—why not? God made the trees, and they were more wonderful, he thought, for his part. And so perhaps they are, but that is no answer. And I do want to know. I want some one who will tell me,—and if you come out of Rubes' country as I think, no doubt you know everything, or remember it?"
He smiled.
The Sun came and touched the lichens of the roof into gold.
Bébée smiled at it gaily as it rose above the tops of the trees, and shone on all the little villages scattered over the plains.
"Ah, dear Sun!" she cried to it. "I am going to be wise. I am going into great Rubes' country. I am going to hear of the Past and the Future. I am going to listen to what the Poets say. The swallows never would tell me anything; but now I shall know as much as they know. Are you not glad for me, O Sun?"
The Sun came over the trees, and heard and said nothing. If he had answered at all he must have said:—
"The only time when a human soul is either wise or happy, is in that one single moment when the hour of my own shining or of the moon's beaming seems to that single soul to be past and present and future, to be at once the creation and the end of all things. Faust knew that; so will you."