Ursus [patting her shoulder and smiling]
Joy makes poets out of all of us. [Half to himself] But it is only a poet who can sing in the clutches of death and pain.
Dea [very thoughtfully]
Yet underneath all my joy I am thinking hard tonight of the beginning of things. I wonder, I wonder is it because I am nearing the end of things.
Ursus
Dea, dearest, you are not ill tonight? You have not again those flutterings in your heart?
Dea
Not more than I can bear. How good Gwymplane has been to me! I wish I had been old enough to see him on the night he got lost, and found me in the snow on my dead mother's breast, and God led us to you.
Ursus
I do not wish to think of that night. You were like a tiny, frozen rose-petal, and he—he was so small himself it didn't seem possible he could have carried you all the way and God——