“Aye, so.”
“There was Alice Dawn, saith my cousin. Diccon and Alice Dawn. Is she here?”
Englefield, standing, looked afar over wold and then into the vast, quiet blue sky. “Yes. Leave horse and man and come with us to the hill yonder.”
A tiny stream ran by the smithy. He kneeled and laved his face and hands and arms, dried them, and moved with Somerville, dismounted, toward the hut under gold and purple waves of the wold.
“Morgen!”
She came forth. Wold went into mist, reeled and was Wander forest and ruined farm. Wander forest, ruined farm, Robert Somerville.
“Morgen—Morgen Fay!”
The wold came back, wold and sky and Richard the smith. More than that. There came, as it were, a blue mantle around her; she felt an arm, a breast, a face looking down, great as the sky and the earth, supernally fair and filled with supernal love. “O Mother, All-Mother!”
Richard was speaking, quickly, “Let us go, Morgen, we three, to the hilltop and talk together there.”
They went, climbing the earth-wave, to a level of grass and heath whence one saw all the wold rippling afar. “Sit down—sit down!” The sun shone, the wind went careering. Who will speak first? They let Somerville do that, who sat with eyes now on Morgen and now on gold specks afar in the wold. “Not-change and change—and which is the great miracle perchance the Saints know! I seem to know the whence, Morgen, but as to the where and the whither—”