But the lovers would shake their heads sadly.
"No, your dreams are not so beautiful as ours. No other dream can take its place. We can only be happy with our own dream."
And, indeed, the dreams that were brought to them seemed poor, pitiful, make-believe things, often ignoble, misbegotten, sordid, and cruel. To the lovers they seemed not dreams at all, but shapes of greed and selfish desire.
So the days passed, bringing them neither tidings nor hope, and there came at length an evening when they turned their steps again to the woodland, and sat down once more under the great oak-tree in the sunset.
"Perhaps our dream has been waiting for us here all the time," they said.
But the wood was empty and echoing, and they sat and ate their supper as before, but silently and in sorrow, and as the sun set they fell asleep as before in each other's arms, but with tears glittering on their eyelids.
And again the moon came flooding the spaces of the wood, and nothing was heard but their breathing and the song of a distant nightingale.
But presently while they slept there was a sound of stealthy footsteps coming up the wood.
It was the old man, with the dream shining by his side, and ever and anon running ahead of him in the eagerness of its hope. Suddenly it stopped, glowing and shimmering like the dancing of the northern lights, and placed a starry finger on its lips for silence.