“Once you told me that trees put on their brightest hues in the autumn as warriors go bravest clad to battle. Now it seems to me as if the spring world had put on its showiest garments to welcome you and me to a new life.”
“May that become a true omen!” the man who rode behind her responded absently.
To turn and scan from under his hand the country they had passed over, he had drawn rein upon the crest. On the gray anxiety of his face confidence dawned as slowly as rosy day upon gray night.
Smiling, the girl looked around at him. “What are you doing back there where I cannot see you, my friend? Since daybreak have you made me go first, even when the path was broad enough for two. What masterfulness is that for a man but six hours wed!”
“It must be looked for that a man would be tempted to make the trial of mastering you,” he answered as lightly as he could. “What I am doing back here is to watch the haughtiness of your head making derision of your thrall-garb.”
“I think thorns are making derision of the fine wedding clothes I sewed for you,” she laughed. “It was quite another place that I expected you would wear them in. Yet it pleases me also that you should go fine while I go plain, for in the realm of the forest are you not lord and I the most lowly of followers? Saw you ever a raw man newly come to the body-guard that bent his neck better to orders?”
A note of laughter was silvering her voice, but passionate earnestness was in his as he spurred abreast of her and leaned over to murmur at her ear:
“Never did woman so stoop to man since the Valkyria came down to Sigurd! How ill do I deserve such love who doubted that love!”
The smile with which she had welcomed him deepened into laughter as tender as the murmur of the brook flowing beside them. “My dear one, if you but knew how warm it lies at my heart—my victory over your doubt! For the first time, I feel myself worthy of your love.”
She pressed her face to his, and so they rode a while, cheek to cheek. His arm tightened around her with feeling how she drooped against him in the weariness she was too proud to own. He said under his breath: