her game to elude it; so mettlesome
was she that she loved it to be cast fair that she might escape as it
was closing round her; she scorned, however her heart might be beating,
to run from her pursuers; she took only the one step backward, which
still left her near them but always out of reach; her head on high now,
but her face as friendly, her manner as gracious as before, she is yours
for the catching. That was ever the unspoken compact between her and the
huntsmen.

It may be but an old trick come back to me with these memories, but
again I clasp my hands to my brows in amaze at the thought that all this
was for me could I retain her love. For I won it, wonder of the gods,
but I won it. I found myself with one foot across the magic circle
wherein she moved, and which none but I had entered; and so, I think, I
saw her in revelation, not as the wild thing they had all conceived
her, but as she really was. I saw no tameless creature, nothing wild
or strange. I saw my sweet love placid as a young cow browsing. As I
brushed aside the haze and she was truly seen for the first time, she
raised her head, like one caught, and gazed at me with meek affrighted
eyes. I told her what had been revealed to me as I looked upon her, and
she trembled, knowing she was at last found, and fain would she have
fled away, but that her fear was less than her gladness. She came to me
slowly; no incomprehensible thing to me now, but transparent as a pool,
and so restful to look upon that she was a bath to the eyes, like banks
of moss.

Because I knew the maid, she was mine. Every maid, I say, is for him
who can know her. The others had but followed the glamour in which she
walked, but I had pierced it and found the woman. I could anticipate her
every thought and gesture, I could have flashed and rippled and mocked
for her, and melted for her and been dear disdain for her. She would
forget this and be suddenly conscious of it as she began to speak, when
she gave me a look with a shy smile in it which meant that she knew I
was already waiting at the end of what she had to say. I call this the
blush of the eye. She had a look and a voice that were for me alone; her
very finger-tips were charged with caresses for me. And I loved even her
naughtinesses, as when she stamped her foot at me, which she could
not do without also gnashing her teeth, like a child trying to look
fearsome. How pretty was that gnashing of her teeth! All her tormentings