"I beg thy pardon," she began; but he interrupted her.
"Thou hast no need," he said. "Besides, thou art right. I know nothing of women. I do not even know, it seems, how they should be treated, or how to please them. Otherwise," he added with his warm smile, "I should not have offended thee this morning by kissing the damsel who sang so sweetly."
The countess smiled, and turned toward him with her face full of light. They had not dismounted, but had halted their horses near the margin of the brook on the banks of which the heron had been feeding lower down.
"That," she said, "is not a thing to be taught. It is learned from the air and from the birds."
"Then why has it not been revealed to me? I have been much in the forest."
"To kill the birds! In good sooth, I know not that one may learn of the air and the woods who goes as thou goest, with falcon and boar-spear. But at least," she added, regarding him with a smile, "thou must know that when one loves—"
She broke off suddenly, and turned away her face, with a flush creeping up into her cheek.
"Well," Albrecht demanded eagerly, "what then?"
"I was but thinking," she returned, in a voice lower than before, "that certainly every man knoweth that when one truly loveth another, he will care for the caress of none save only the loved one."
"I had never thought of that," the knight responded gravely.