"In this way," she resumed, "it became my custom on each Saturday, after closing the forge, to come here with my woman's raiment, and wait in a hollow until night had fallen, and make myself clean of the week's blackness. For I dared not do this by daylight, or be seen going forth from my forge in my proper person."
"But why did you choose to bathe at midnight?" asked the King.
She was silent for a few moments, and then said hurriedly, "I did not choose to bathe at midnight until a month ago.—For the rest," she resumed, "I was hard to please in the matter of the shoes because I knew that when they were finished you would ride away. And therefore the more you improved the crosser I became. And if I have tormented you for a month it was because you tormented me by refusing to speak when you saw me here, in spite of your hateful vow; and you would not even look at my cake in the larder."
"Women are strange," said the King. "How do you know I did not look at the cake?"
"I do know," she said as hurriedly as before. "And if I would not tell you who I was, it was because I could not bear, on the other hand, to extort from you a love you seemed so reluctant to endure; until indeed it became of its own accord too strong even for the purpose which brought you every week to the Ring. For I knew that purpose, since all dwellers in Washington know why men go up the hill with the new moon."
"But when my love did become too strong for my vow, and opened my lips at last," said the King, "why did you run away?"
Viola said, "Had you not run away the week before? And now I have answered all your questions."
"No," said the King, "not all. You haven't told me yet when you first loved me."
Viola smiled and said, "I first stole barley sugar when my father said This is for the other little girl over the way'; and I first loved you when, seeing you had been too absent-minded to know that Pepper had cast her shoes, I feared you were in love."
"But that was three minutes after we met!" cried the King.