‘I am well again. It has passed. I entreat you, release me. Are you all wild men here?’
‘I took you for a ghost, I say.’
‘Mayhap I am one.’
‘Not with this warmth and softness.’
She tore herself free, and backed from him. A ray of the growing sunlight had found a passage through the green and fastened with its lips upon her face. It was a very pretty one, sweet as tinted wax; and the mouth was blushing to that kiss. Gazing on it, some sense, hitherto unfelt, unknown, opened to life in Brion like a delivered bud.
‘Boy!’ said the girl, with disdain: ‘Boy!’
‘I shall be a man betimes,’ said Brion; ‘and before you are a woman.’
She opened her lips as if to retort, found nothing to say, and moved to go. Her manner was all at once stately and self-possessed. She walked like a proud little lady, and, turning her head over her shoulder, bade her assailant a stiff good-morrow.
‘May I not see you from the dark wood?’ said Brion; and ‘I forbid you to come with me,’ she answered, and walked on.
Nevertheless, he followed her at a distance; when, nearing the fringe of the copse on its east side, what was his surprise to see her already mounted and riding away upon a little ass, which had apparently been tethered there awaiting her return all the time. She never once looked round, but, skirting the moat, vanished in the direction of the moor.