Erna looked at him with a doubt, born of his broken speech, in her eyes; but the brightness of his smile reassured her.
"The little daughter of the charcoal-burner is ill," she answered, "and I am carrying her food and a healing draught from the leech."
"But why shouldst thou trouble about the daughter of the charcoal-burner?"
"Why should I not? Is she not human, and has she not a soul like ours?"
"Like thine, perchance," the knight responded. "Thou hast a soul like a child's, all white and fair."
And for all the rest of their way through the forest he was so deeply sunk in thought that he said scarcely a single word, so that Erna could not but wonder what had come over the spirit of her merry betrothed. From time to time he looked at her and sighed, as if he were reasoning with himself whether he did well to be still with her; and at last, as they rode homeward, she questioned him of what was in his mind.
"It is the doubt," he told her, "whether I had the right to make thee love me. It did not come to me to consider that until now; and now—"
"And now," she said in a ringing voice, as he broke off and left his sentence unfinished, "now it is too late."
The knight shook himself, as if to shake off a gloomy doubt, and struck his spurs into his splendid chestnut stallion.
"Yes," he cried in a voice of exultation; "now it is too late!"