"To the lady who lives in the Grange by the water,
The water of Iron in the Sussex countrie,
The lad of Seth's House prays for comfort and pity—
Have pity, my true love, have pity on me!"
A sudden weariness passed over Naomi, and Reuben led her out of the dance and brought her a drink of mild icy ale. He did not offer to take her home, and she did not ask to go. If he had offered she would have gone, but she had no will of her own—all desire, all initiative was drowned in the rhythm of the dance and the sadness of the old tune.
"O why when we loved like the swallows in April,
Should beauty forget now their nests have grown cold?
O why when we kissed 'mid the ewes on the hanger,
Should you turn from me now that they winter in fold?"
He led her back into the crowd, and once more she felt his arms round her, so light, so strong, while her feet spun with his, tricked by magic. She became acutely conscious of his presence—the roughness of his coat-sleeve, the faint scent of the sprigged waistcoat, which had been folded away in lavender. And all the while she had another picture of him in her heart, not in his Sunday best, but in corduroys and the blue shirt which had stood out of the January dusk, the last piece of colour in the day. She remembered the swing of his arm, the crash of the axe on the trunk, the bending of his back as he pulled it out, the muscles swelled under the skin ... and then the tingling creep in her own heart, that sudden suffocating thrill which had come to her there beside Harry in the gloam....