Presently she said, "Do not think me foolish, but wilt thou enter
first?--it is so dark." And she stood in the door-way, with her hand on
the door, while he entered.

He said, "There is nothing here, sweetheart, but a monstrous damp odor."

And she answered, "Nay, but go to the very end; there may be toads; and
when thou art there, halloo to me." So she waited with her hand on the
door.

He called to her, "There is nothing, love. Wait until I return to thee."
But, ere he had ceased speaking, she clapped to the door with all her
might, and did push forward the great iron bolt, so that he was a
prisoner in the cave; I being rooted to the ground with astonishment, as
fast as was ever the oak-tree under which I stood. At first he thought
'twas but one o' her pretty trickeries, and I heard his gay laugh as he
came to the shut door, and he called out, and said, "So, sweetheart, I
am in truth a prisoner o' war; but art thou not an unmerciful general to
confine the captured in so rheumatic a cavern?"

She sat down and leaned her head against the door, but said not a word.

And he spoke again, saying, "Darling, I pray thee waste not what little
time doth yet remain to us."

Still she answered not; and again he spake, and his voice began to be
sorrowful.

"Oh, my wife," he said, "canst thou jest at such a time?"

At last she answered him, saying, "I jest not."

His voice changed somewhat, and he said, "What dost thou, then?"

She answered, "I keep what is mine. Where my forefathers did hide their
treasure, there hide I mine."

He said, in a loud voice, "God will not suffer it."

Then fell a silence between them. But by-and-by he spoke again.
"Darling," he saith, "surely thou dost not mean to do this thing?"

And she saith, like a child when 'tis naughty, and knoweth well that it
is, but likes not to say so, "What thing?"

He answered, "Thou canst not truly mean to shut me here to bring
dishonor upon me, who have loved thee better than man ever loved woman"
(for so do all men say, and truly think).

She said, "Thy life is more to me than thy honor."

And he groaned aloud, crying, "Oh God! that I have lived to hear thee
say it!" and again there fell a silence, save for the whispering of the
night in the trees above us and the creeping of small creatures through
the dry grass. 'Twas almost curfew-time, and there was one star in the
black front o' th' night, like the star on the forehead of a black
stallion.