summer
moonlight spinning. The light made her a thing of silver and
mystery. He sat down at her feet and told her he loved her, and
told her how beautiful she seemed to him. He had a lover's voice,
he spoke with a tender reverence that came near to awe, and she had
never before been touched by adoration. She made him no definite
answer, but it was clear his words pleased her.

After that he talked to her whenever he could take an
opportunity. The valley became the world for him, and the world
beyond the mountains where men lived by day seemed no more than a
fairy tale he would some day pour into her ears. Very tentatively
and timidly he spoke to her of sight.

Sight seemed to her the most poetical of fancies, and she
listened to his description of the stars and the mountains and her
own sweet white-lit beauty as though it was a guilty indulgence.
She did not believe, she could only half understand, but she was
mysteriously delighted, and it seemed to him that she completely
understood.

His love lost its awe and took courage. Presently he was for
demanding her of Yacob and the elders in marriage, but she became
fearful and delayed. And it was one of her elder sisters who first
told Yacob that Medina-sarote and Nunez were in love.

There was from the first very great opposition to the marriage
of Nunez and Medina-sarote; not so much because they valued her as
because they held him as a being apart, an idiot, incompetent thing
below the permissible level of a man. Her sisters opposed it
bitterly as bringing discredit on them all; and old Yacob, though
he had formed a sort of liking for his clumsy, obedient serf, shook
his head and said the thing could not be. The young men were all
angry at the idea of corrupting the race, and one went so far as to
revile and strike Nunez. He struck back. Then for the first time
he found an advantage in seeing, even by twilight, and after that
fight was over no one was disposed to raise a hand against him.
But they still found his marriage impossible.

Old Yacob had a tenderness for his last little daughter, and
was grieved to have her weep upon his shoulder.

"You see, my dear, he's an idiot. He has delusions; he can't
do anything right."

"I know," wept Medina-sarote. "But he's better than he was.
He's getting better. And he's strong, dear father, and
kind--stronger and kinder than any other man in the world. And he
loves me--and, father, I love him."

Old