ee above her head. And now their eyes met and did
not separate. He put out his hand and broke a branch from the tree and
offered it to her. She took it from him slowly, as though she were in a
dream, and laid it in her lap, and put her face in her hands and began
to cry.

Young Gerard whispered, "Why are you crying?"

Thea said, "Oh, my wedding, my wedding! Only last year I thought of the
night of my wedding and how it would be. It was not with torchlight and
shouting and wine, but moonlight and silence and the scent of wild
blossoms. And now I know that it was not the night of my wedding I
dreamed of."

"What did you dream of?" asked Young Gerard.

"The night of my first love."

"Thea," said Young Gerard, and he knelt beside her.

"And my love's first kiss."

"Oh, Thea," said Young Gerard, and he took her hands.

"Why did you not feel their blows?" she said. "I felt them."

Their arms went round each other, and for the second time that night
they kissed.

Young Gerard said, "I've always wondered if this would happen."

And Thea answered, "I didn't know it would be you."

"Didn't you? didn't you?" he whispered, stroking her head, wondering at
himself doing what he had so often dreamed of doing.

"Oh," she faltered, "sometimes I thought--it might--be you, darling."

"Thea, Thea!"

"When I came over the Mount to swim in the river, and saw you in the
distance among your sheep, there was a swifter river running through
all my body. When I came every April to ask for your cherry-tree, what
did it matter to me that it was not in bloom? for all my heart was wild
with bloom, oh, Gerard, my--lover!"

"Oh, Thea, my love! What can I give you, Thea, I, a shepherd?"

"You were the lord of the earth, and you gave me its flowers and its
birds and its secret waters. What more could you give me, you, a
shepherd and my lord?"

"The wild white bloom of its fruit-trees that comes to the branches in
April like love to the heart. I'll give it you now. Sit here, sit here!
I'll make you a bower of the cherry, and a crown, and a carpet too.
There's nothing in all April lovely and wild enough for you to-night,
your bridal night, my lady and my darling!"

And in a great fit of joy he broke branch after branch from the tree as
she sat at its foot, and set them about her, and filled her arms to
overflowing, and crowned her with blossoms, and shook the bloom under
her feet, till her shy happy face, paling and reddening by tur