Of The House and the Pleasance in the Wood

But she laughed outright, and stooped down to him, and put her hand to his arms, and raised him up, and said to him: "What is this, my Squire, that thou kneelest to me as to an idol?"

He said faltering: "I wot not; but perchance thou art an idol; and I fear thee."

"What!" she said, "more than yesterday, whenas thou sawest me afraid?"

Said he: "Yea, for that now I see thee unhidden, and meseemeth there hath been none such since the old days of the Gentiles."

She said: "Hast thou not yet bethought thee of a gift to crave of me, a reward for the slaying of mine enemy, and the saving of me from death?"

"O my Lady," he said, "even so much would I have done for any other lady, or, forsooth, for any poor man; for so my manhood would have bidden me. Speak not of gifts to me then. Moreover" (and he reddened therewith, and his voice faltered), "didst thou not give me my sweet reward yesterday? What more durst I ask?"

She held her peace awhile, and looked on him keenly; and he reddened under her gaze. Then wrath came into her face, and she reddened and knit her brows, and spake to him in a voice of anger, and said: "Nay, what is this? It is growing in my mind that thou deemest the gift of me unworthy! Thou, an alien, an outcast; one endowed with the little wisdom of the World without the Wood! And here I stand before thee, all glorious in my nakedness, and so fulfilled of wisdom, that I can make this wilderness to any whom I love more full of joy than the kingdoms and cities of the world--and thou!--Ah, but it is the Enemy that hath done this, and made the guileless guileful! Yet will I have the upper hand at least, though thou suffer for it, and I suffer for thee."