Bethink thee, dear, if but an hour ago the monster had slain thee,
and rent thee ere we had lain in each other's arms!"
"Alas!" she said, "and had I lain in thine arms an hundred times,
or an hundred times an hundred, should not the world be barren
to me, wert thou gone from it, and that could never more be?
But thou friend, thou well-beloved, fain were I to do thy
will that thou mightest be the happier...and I withal.
And if thou command it, be it so! Yet now should I tell
thee all my thought, and it is on my mind, that for a many
hundreds of years, yea, while our people were yet heathen,
when a man should wed a maid all the folk knew of it, and were
witnesses of the day and the hour thereof: now thou knowest
that the time draws nigh when we may look for those messengers
of the Innocent Folk, who come every spring to this cave to see
if there be any whom they may speed on the way to the Well
at the World's End. Therefore if thou wilt (and not otherwise)
I would abide their coming if it be not over long delayed;
so that there may be others to witness our wedding besides God,
and those his creatures who dwell in the wilderness.
Yet shall all be as thou wilt."
"How shall I not do after thy bidding?" said Ralph.
"I will abide their coming: yet would that they were here
to-day! And one thing I will pray of thee, that because of them
thou wilt not forbear, or cause me to forbear, such kissing
and caressing as is meet betwixt troth-plight lovers.
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