“If you’ll sit a little nearer to me, Father,” said Maia obligingly, “the young man can sit between you and my sister.”
So that is where Ulfin found himself, and that was where he had never dared to hope to be.
The banquet was a strange as well as a magnificent scene—because, of course, the Mer-people were beautiful as the day, the five children were quite as pretty as any five children have any need to be, and the King and Queen of the Under Folk were as handsome as handsome. So that all this handsomeness was a very curious contrast to the strange heavy features of the Under Folk who now sat at table, so pleasant and friendly, toasting their late enemies.
The contrast between the Princess Freia and Ulfin was particularly marked, for their heads bent near together as they talked.
“Princess,” he was saying, “tomorrow you will go back to your kingdom, and I shall never see you again.”
The Princess could not think of anything to say, because it seemed to her that what he said was true.
“But,” he went on, “I shall be glad all my life to have known and loved so dear and beautiful a Princess.”
And again the Princess could think of nothing to say.
“Princess,” he said, “tell me one thing. Do you know what I should say to you if I were a Prince?”
“Yes,” said Freia; “I know what you would say and I know what I should answer, dear Ulfin, if you were only a commoner of Merland ... I mean, you know, if your face were like ours. But since you are of the Under Folk and I am a Mermaid, I can only say that I will never forget you, and that I will never marry anyone else.”