Then he cast himself on the ground before her, and kissed
her feet, and clasped her about the knees, and laid his cheek
to her raiment, and fawned upon her, and cried out many an idle
word of love, and still she wept a while and spake not.
At last she reached her hand down to his face and fondled it,
and he let his lips lie on the hand, and she suffered it a while,
and then took him by the arm and raised him up and led him
on swiftly as before; and he knew not what to do or say,
and durst by no means stay her, and could frame no word
to ask her wherefore.
So they sped across a waste not much beset with trees, he silent,
she never wearying or slacking her pace or faltering as to the way,
till they came into the thick wood again, and ever when he would
have spoken she hushed him, with "Not yet! Not yet!"
Until at last when the sun had been up for some three hours,
she led him through a hazel copse, like a deep hedge, into a
cleared grassy place where were great grey stones lying about,
as if it had been the broken doom-ring of a forgotten folk.
There she threw herself down on the grass and buried her face amidst
the flowers, and was weeping and sobbing again and he bending over her,
till she turned to him and drew him down to her and put her hands
to his face, and laid her cheeks all wet with tears to his,
and fell to kissing him long and sweetly, so that in his turn
he was like to weep for the very sweetness of love.
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