Presently they went on, and the feet of Face-of-god led him unwitting
toward the chestnut grove by the old dyke where he had met the Bride
such a little while ago, till he bethought whither he was going and
stopped short and reddened; and the Sun-beam noted it, but spake not;
but he said: 'Hereby is a fair place for us to sit and talk till the
day's work beginneth.'
So then he turned aside, and soon they came to a hawthorn brake out
of which arose a great tall-stemmed oak, showing no green as yet save
a little on its lower twigs; and anigh it, yet with room for its
boughs to grow freely, was a great bird-cherry tree, all covered now
with sweet-smelling white blossoms. There they sat down on the trunk
of a tree felled last year, and she cast off her cloak, and took his
face between her two hands and kissed him long and fondly, and for a
while their joy had no word. But when speech came to them, it was
she that spake first and said:
'Gold-mane, my dear, sorely I wonder at thee and at me, how we are
changed since that day last autumn when I first saw thee. Whiles I
think, didst thou not laugh when thou wert by thyself that day, and
mock at me privily, that I must needs take such wisdom on myself, and
lesson thee standing like a stripling before me.
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