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He said, “Patience, Patience, thou wilt break mine heart.”

And she, still kneeling, did cry out with a wild voice, “They lied who named me, for in an ill hour was I born, and I have not patience to support it! I thought that thou didst love me, and lo! thou lovest the husband of another woman more than thou lovest me!”

He bent to lift her up, groaning, but she would not; whereat he trembled from head to foot, and she shook with his trembling as the leaves of a tree when the shaft is smitten by lightning. And she cried out again, and said, “As there is a God in heaven, thou dost not love me, an thou canst go to war and leave me to die o’ grief.” Then, as though ’twas torn from him, he burst forth, “Now as there is a God, thou dost not love me, to torture me thus!”

And all at once she was quiet. So he stooped and lifted her, and called her his “bride,” and his “wife,” and his “darling,” and his “heart’s blood,” and more wild, fond, foolish names than at this day I can remember. ‘Twas near sundown, and that night he was to ride. Over against the dark jags o’ th’ hills there ran a narrow streak of light, like a golden ribbon. And the brown clouds above and below it were like locks o’ hair made wanton by the wind, which it as a fillet did seek to bind. But they twain walked ever on, till by-and-by they neared that cave o’ which I did tell ye. As they came in front o’t my lady turned, and smiling piteously, “Ernle,” saith she, “wilt thou go with me into the cave and kiss me there, that when thou art gone I may come hither and think o’ thee?”

And he said, “Oh, my heart! what would I not for thee?” And he kissed her again and again.

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?”