‘Beauty!’ he said, ‘who would have dreamed to have stumbled on the likes of you on the moor? Nay, rather let me bless my stars that I have been vouchsafed the privilege of meeting and speaking with a real fairy. It is said that you must never encounter a fairy without taking of her a reminiscence, to be a charm through life.’
Suddenly he put his hand to her throat. She had a delicate blue riband about it, disclosed when she cast aside her kerchief. He put his finger between the riband and her throat, and pulled.
‘You are strangling me!’ exclaimed Eve, shrinking away, alarmed at his boldness.
‘I care not,’ he replied, ‘this I will have.’
He wrenched at and broke the riband, and then drew it from her neck. As he did so a gold ring fell on the floor. He stooped, picked it up, and put it on his little finger.
‘Look,’ said he with a laugh, ‘my hand is so small, my fingers so slim—I can wear this ring.’
‘Give it me back! Let me have it! You must not take it!’ Eve was greatly agitated and alarmed. ‘I may not part with it. It was my mother’s.’
Then, with the same daring insolence with which he had taken the ring, he caught the girl to him, and kissed her.