were my lord--my lord! And a fierce pain stabbed my heart, knowing you
had come too late by but one hour; for had it not been that Dunstanwolde
had led me to you, I knew--ah! how well I knew--that our hearts would
have beaten together not as two hearts but as one."

"As they do now," he cried.

"As they do now," she answered--"as they do now!"

"And from the moment that your rose fell at my feet and I raised it in my
hand," he said, "I knew I held some rapture which was my own. And when
you stood before me at Dunstanwolde's side and our eyes met, I could not
understand--nay, I could scarce believe that it had been taken from me."

There, in her arms, among the flowers and in the sweetness of the sun, he
lived again the past, telling her of the days when, knowing his danger,
he had held himself aloof, declining to come to her lord's house with the
familiarity of a kinsman, because the pang of seeing her often was too
great to bear; and relating to her also the story of the hours when he
had watched her and she had not known his nearness or guessed his pain,
when she had passed in her equipage, not seeing him, or giving him but a
gracious smile. He had walked outside her window at midnight sometimes,
too, coming because he was a despairing man, and could not sleep, and
returning homeward, having found no rest, but only increase of anguish.
"Sometimes," he said, "I dared not look into your eyes, fearing my own
would betray me; but now I can gaze into your soul itself, for the
midnight is over--and joy cometh with the morning."

As he had spoken, he had caressed softly with his hand her cheek and her
crown of hair, and such was his great gentleness that 'twas as if he