"Do you like my hair?" said she.
"Why didn't you do it like that before?"
"I don't know. I wanted to. But I didn't."
"Why not?"
Rose hid her face. "I thought," said she, "you'd notice, and think—and think I was after you."
No. He could never say that she had been after him, that she had laid a lure. No huntress she. But she had found him, the hunted, run down and sick in his dark den. And she had stooped there in the darkness, and tended and comforted him.
They set out.
"She said I was to tell you," said Rose, "to be sure and take me through the pine-woods to the pond."
How well that lady knew the setting that would adorn his Rose; sunlight and shadow that made her glide fawn-like among the tall stems of the trees. Through the pine-woods he took her, his white wood-nymph, and through the low lands covered with bog myrtle, fragrant under her feet. Beyond the marsh they found a sunny hollow in the sand where the heath touched the pond. The brushwood sheltered them.
Side by side they sat and took their fill of joy in gazing at each other, absolutely dumb.