Now, as the young bride turned her slow feet up the mountain, down where her glad feet had turned as a maid, she sat her there by the lake.
The little creatures she was wont to love and understand gathered about her and wondered at her state.
"She hath returned," said the red weasel; "see where she sitteth, her head upon her hand. I slew a young bird at her feet, and she spake no word, nor did she care."
"It is not she," said a linnet, swaying on a safe spray, "for had it been she her anger would have slain thee."
"It is she," said the red weasel, laughing in his throat; "but her eyes are hidden by her fingers, and she cannot see."
"It is not she," said a brown wren. "Her cheek was full and rosy and her song loud. This one sitteth all mute and pale."
"It is she," said the red weasel, "who sitteth upon the mountain, her face hidden between her hands. She sitteth in silence, and who can tell her thoughts? She hath been to the great city."
"It is a small place," hummed a honey-bee. "Once, long ago, she raised her white palm between her eyes and its smoke. 'See,' she laughed, 'my little hand can cover it.'"
"It is so great," said the red weasel, "that those who leave the mountains for love of it return to us no more."
"Yet she hath returned," said a lone lark hanging in the sky, "and I myself have sung beside her ear."