"Mon ami! Mon cher ami!" It thrilled her to the heart to say the words; she glanced at him half fearfully, then broke forth afresh, lest he should have time to think. "Ned, tell me! It is true—all this? I am not asleep? It is not a dream?"
He pressed her hands. "Look round you! It is morning."
Her lips trembled; she obeyed him, looking slowly from the cool sky to the tree-tops, where the heavy leaves were still damp with the night's frost.
"Yes, it is morning!" she said. "We have all the day!"
Watching her intently, he did not add, as would the common lover, "we have many days"; she seemed to him so beautiful, so naïve that her words must compass perfection.
"We have all the day," he echoed. "How shall it be spent?"
Then she turned to him, all graciousness, her young face lifted to the light. "Ah, you must decide! I do not wish even to think; the world is so—how do you say—enchanted?"
He laughed in delight at her charming, pleading smile, her charming, pleading hesitation; he caught her mood with swift intuition.
"That's it! The world is enchanted! Away behind us, is the Dreaming Wood. What do you say? Shall we go and seek the Sleeping Beauty?"
She nodded silently. He was so perfectly the Blake of old—the Blake who understood.