ntly. Then they went
to Welshpool, ride and tie on Gwyllem's horse. Tongue loosened by the
claret, Gwyllem raved aloud of Branwen, like a babbling faun, while to
each rapture Richard affably assented. In his heart he likened the boy
to Dionysos at Naxos, and could find no blame for Ariadne. Moreover,
the room was comfortably dark and cool, for thick vines hung about the
windows, rustling and tapping pleasantly, and Richard was content.

"She does not love me?" Gwyllem cried. "It is well enough. I do not
come to her as one merchant to another, since love was never bartered.
Listen, Saxon!" He caught up Richard's lute. The strings shrieked
beneath Gwyllem's fingers as he fashioned his rude song.

Sang Gwyllem:

"Love me or love me not, it is enough
That I have loved you, seeing my whole life is
Uplifted and made glad by the glory of Love,--
My life that was a scroll bescrawled and blurred
With tavern-catches, which that pity of his
Erased, and wrote instead one lonely word,
O Branwen!

"I have accorded you incessant praise
And song and service, dear, because of this;
And always I have dreamed incessantly
Who always dreamed, when in oncoming days
This man or that shall love you, and at last
This man or that shall win you, it must be
That, loving him, you will have pity on me
When happiness engenders memory
And long thoughts, nor unkindly, of the past,
O Branwen!

"Of this I know not surely, who am sure
That I shall always love you while I live,
And that, when I am dead, with naught to give
Of song or service, Love will yet endure,
And yet retain his last prerogative,
When I lie still, and sleep out centuries,
With dreams of you and the exceeding love
I bore you, and am glad dreaming thereof,
And give God thanks for all, and so find peace,
O Branwen!"

"Now, were I to get as tipsy as that," Richard enviously thought,
midway in a return to his stolid sheep, "I would simply go to sleep
and wake up with a headache. And were I to fall as many fathoms deep
in love as this Gwyllem ventures, or, rather, as he hurls himself with
a splurge, I would perform--I wonder, now, what miracle?"

For he was, though vaguely, discontent. This Gwyllem was so young, so
earnest over every trifle, and above all, was so untroubled by
forethought: each least desire controlled him, as varying winds sport
with a fallen leaf, whose frank submission to superior vagaries the
boy appe