If thou wilt drag the truth out of
me, this is the very truth: that to-day is happy to me as it is to
thee, and that I have longed sore for its coming. O Gold-mane, O
speech-friend, if thou wert to pray me or command me that I lie in
thine arms to-night, I should know not how to gainsay thee. Yet I
beseech thee to forbear, lest thy death and mine come of it. And why
should we die, O friend, when we are so young, and the world lies so
fair before us, and the happy days are at hand when the Children of
the Wolf and the kindreds of the Dale shall deliver the Folk, and all
days shall be good and all years?'
They had both risen up as she spake, and now he put forth his hands
to her and took her in his arms, wondering the while, as he drew her
to him, how much slenderer and smaller and weaker she seemed in his
embrace than he had thought of her; and when their lips met, he felt
that she kissed him as he her. Then he held her by the shoulders at
arms' length from him, and beheld her face how her eyes were closed
and her lips quivering. But before him, in a moment of time, passed
a picture of the life to be in the fair Dale, and all she would give
him there, and the days good and lovely from morn to eve and eve to
morn; and though in that moment it was hard for him to speak, at last
he spoke in a voice hoarse at first, and said:
'Thou sayest sooth, O friend; we will not die, but live; I will not
drag our deaths upon us both, nor put a sword in the hands of Folk-
might, who loves me not.
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