He turned back and knocked at the hut door and opened it. Bébée was just beginning to undress herself; she had taken off her white kerchief and her wooden shoes; her pretty shoulders and her little neck shone white in the moon; her feet were bare on the mud floor. She started with a cry and threw the handkerchief again on her shoulders, but there was no fear of him; only the unconscious instinct of her girlhood. He thought for a moment that he would not go away until the morrow-- "Did you want me?" said Bébée softly, with happy eyes of surprise and yet a little startled, fearing some evil might have happened to him that he should have returned thus. "No; I do not want you, dear," he said gently; no--he did not want her, poor little soul; she wanted him, but he--there were so many of these things in his life, and he liked her too well to love her. "No, dear, I did not want you," said Flamen, drawing her arms about him, and feeling her flutter like a little bird, while the moonlight came in through the green leaves and fell in fanciful patterns on the floor. "But I came to say--you have had one happy day. Wholly happy, have you not, poor little Bébée?" "Ah, yes!" she sighed rather than said the answer in her wondrous gladness; drawn there close to him, with the softness of his lips upon her. Could he have come back only to ask that? "Well, that is something. You will remember it always, Bébée?" he murmured in his unconscious cruelty. "I did not wish to spoil your cloudless pleasure, dear--for you care for me a little, do you not?--so I came back to tell you only now, that I go away for a little while to-morrow." "Go away!" She trembled in his arms and turned cold as ice; a great terror and darkness fell upon her; she had never thought that he would ever go away. He caressed her, and played with her as a boy may with a bird before he wrings its neck. "You will come back?" He kissed her: "Surely." "To-morrow?" "Nay--not so soon." "In a week?" "Hardly." "In a month, then?" "Perhaps." "Before winter, anyway?" He looked aside from the beseeching, tearful, candid eyes, and kissed her hair and her throat, and said, "Yes, dear--beyond a doubt." She clung to him, crying silently; he wished that women would not weep. "Come, Bébée, listen," he said coaxingly, thinking to break the bitterness to her. "This is not wise, and it gives me pain. There is so much for you to do. You know so little. There is so much to learn. I will leave you many books, and you must grow quite learned in my absence. The Virgin is all very well in her way, but she cannot teach us much, poor lady. For her kingdom is called Ignorance. You must teach yourself. I leave you that to do. The days will go by quickly if you are laborious and patient. Do you love me, little one?" For an answer she kissed his hand.