pool overhung with boughs of alder and thorn. She stepped
daintily over a row of big stones laid in the rippling shallow;
and staying herself in mid-stream on the biggest of them,
and gathering up her gown, looked up stream with a happy face,
and then looked over her shoulder to Ralph and said:
"The year has been good to me these seasons, so that when I
stayed here on my way to the Castle of Abundance, I found
but few stones washed away, and crossed wellnigh dry-shod,
but this stone my feet are standing on now, I brought
down from under the cliff, and set it amid-most, and I said
that when I brought thee hither I would stay thereon and talk
with thee while I stood above the freshness of the water,
as I am doing now."

Ralph looked on her and strove to answer her, but no words would come
to his lips, because of the greatness of his longing; she looked
on him fondly, and then stooped to look at the ripples that bubbled
up about her shoes, and touched them at whiles; then she said:
"See how they long for the water, these feet that have worn the waste
so long, and know how kind it will run over them and lap about them:
but ye must abide a little, waste-wearers, till we have done a thing
or two. Come, love!" And she reached her hand out behind her to Ralph,
not looking back, but when she felt his hand touch it, she stepped
lightly over the other stones, and on to the grass with him, and led
him quietly up the slope that went up to the table of greensward
before the cave. But when they came on to the level grass she
kissed him, and then turned toward the valley and spake solemnly:
"May all blessings light on this House of the wilderness and this
Hall of the Summer-tide, and the Chamber of Love that here is!"