Thea looked up and said with a child's laugh, "Break me a branch!"
"I'd want Jacob's Ladder for that," smiled Young Gerard.
"Then shake the tree and bring them down!" she insisted.
"Here come your stars," said Young Gerard. Suddenly she was enveloped in a falling shower, white and heavenly.
"The stars—!" she cried. "Oh, what is it?"
"My cherry-tree—it's in flower—" said Young Gerard, and his voice trembled. She looked up quickly and saw that he was standing beside her, shaking the tree above her head. And now their eyes met and did not separate. He put out his hand and broke a branch from the tree and offered it to her. She took it from him slowly, as though she were in a dream, and laid it in her lap, and put her face in her hands and began to cry.
Young Gerard whispered, "Why are you crying?"
Thea said, "Oh, my wedding, my wedding! Only last year I thought of the night of my wedding and how it would be. It was not with torchlight and shouting and wine, but moonlight and silence and the scent of wild blossoms. And now I know that it was not the night of my wedding I dreamed of."
"What did you dream of?" asked Young Gerard.
"The night of my first love."