"I promise."
She looked down at me, smiling, uncertain.
"What will you do to me if I do not?" she asked.
"Drown you in snow three times every day."
"And I needs must kiss you to buy my safety?"
"Yes, and with hearty good will, too."
She glanced hastily around, perhaps to seek an avenue for escape, perhaps to see who might spy us.
Then, looking down at me, a-blush now, yet laughing, she bent her head slowly, very slowly to mine, and rested her lips on mine.
Then she was up and off like a young tree-lynx, fleeing, stumbling on her pattens; but, like a white hare, I lay very still in my form, unstirring, gazing up into the bluest, softest sky that my dazzled eyes ever had unclosed upon.
There was a faint fragrance in the air. It may have been arbutus—or the trace of her lips on mine.