The gray sisters had taught her many of their ways of battling with disease; and she could make fresh cool drinks, and she could brew beautiful remedies from simple herbs.

There was so much that she might do; her fancy played with it almost happily.

And then, only to touch his hand, only to hear his voice; her heart rose at the thought, as a lark to its morning song.
At Rixensart, buried in its greenery, as she went through it in morning light, some peasants greeted her cheerily, and called to her to rest in a house porch, and gave her honey and bread.

She could not eat much; her tongue was parched and her throat was dry, but the kindness was precious to her, and she went on her road the stronger for it.
"It is a long way to walk to Paris," said the woman, with some curious wonder.

Bebee smiled, though her eyes grew wet.
"She has the look of the little Gesu," said the Rixensart people; and they watched her away with a vague timid pity.
So she went on through Ottignies and La Roche to Villers, and left the great woods and the city chimes behind her, and came through the green abbey valleys through Tilly and Ligny, and Fleurus, and so into the coal and iron fields that lie round Charleroi.
Here her heart grew sick, and her courage sank under the noise and the haste, before the blackness and the hideousness.