“The next day,” he said, “she sent me word to go back to River Ward, and I knew by that that she loved me. So I went, and by the evidence of the work I have done you know how I have loved her.”
“By the evidence of the faith I have kept,” said Daria, “you know how I have loved him.”
All this time I could see the faces of the men, especially of the girl’s father and of Prassade, growing sterner. Trastevera looked down, studying the pattern of the meadow grass. Persilope bit his lip in the midst, with the Cup in his hand, and the lover grew bolder.
“Is love so cheap a thing to you, Persilope, that you take it from us before we have tasted it? It is Daria I love as she is, as I have seen her grow from a child into a woman, not a stranger, looking at me with unremembering eyes. Let the men take up the Treasure and bury it again, as they did for Trastevera.”
“There was a reason,” the chief began, and stopped, as if he knew that to argue was to lose.
“Oh, a reason——” I do not know by what imperceptible degrees and mutual consentings the lovers had got across the open space to each other, but there they were, handfast, confronting him. “Reason you thought you had, but what good came of all your reasons seeing that Trastevera has lost the Far-Seeing for the sake of which she was excused from the Cup. Let them bury the Treasure again—or give it to the Far-Folk, for all I care, since nothing comes of it but wars and forgettings.”
He caught the girl to him fiercely as he spoke, irritated by the hardening of the elders’ minds against that very touch of wildness and rebellion by which he urged the disregard of custom. Whatever advantage he had with Persilope because of the precedent, he had lost by the hint of its insufficiency.
“If,” said the chief, holding the bowl before him, “there had arisen any occasion, which I do not allow: if there had arisen such an occasion for doubting the wisdom of our former breach, it would be greater cause for our not admitting it now. Do you propose”—forestalling the rising thought—“to bring it to Council? Look around you and see that we who make the Council are already agreed.” The eyes of the young couple traveled about the group, they saw regret, but no relenting.
“If she forgets you,” said the chief more kindly, “she forgets also the pain of her forgetting, and you shall teach her to love again.”
“Girl,” said her father, “if you shame me there is no forgetfulness deep enough for that.”