"
So they were speedily naked and playing in the water:
and Ursula took Ralph by the arm and looked to his shoulder and said:
"O my lad of the pale edges, where is gone thy glory?
There is no mark of the sword's pilgrimage on thy shoulder."
"Nay, none?" quoth he.
"None, none!" she said, "Didst thou say the very sooth of thy hurt
in the battle, O poor lad of mine?" "Yea, the sooth," said he.
Then she laughed sweetly and merrily like the chuckle of a flute
over the rippling waters, that rose higher and higher about them,
and she turned her eyes askance and looked adown to her own sleek side,
and laid her hand on it and laughed again. Then said Ralph:
"What is toward, beloved? For thy laugh is rather of joy that
of mirth alone."
She said: "O smooth-skinned warrior, O Lily and Rose of battle;
here on my side yesterday was the token of the hart's tyne
that gored me when I was a young maiden five years ago:
look now and pity the maiden that lay on the grass of the forest,
and the woodman a-passing by deemed her dead five years ago."
Ralph stooped down as the ripple washed away from her, then said:
"In sooth here is no mark nor blemish, but the best handiwork of God,
as when he first made a woman from the side of the Ancient Father
of the field of Damask. But lo you love, how swift the tide cometh up,
and I long to see thy feet on the green grass, and I fear the sea,
lest it stir the joy over strongly in our hearts and we be not able
to escape from its waves.
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