“Thank you for rising thus early, and coming into the orchard, and standing in the sun rays, and being, my maid, so beautiful. I little thought to find so fair a vision. ’Twill be a sweet one to carry forth with me--if it be the last on earth.” Her wits were never quick to work. She went her country way, as a rule, as straight and sweetly and unthinkingly as the lilies grow. To question why a noble visitor at the castle--and a visitor it must be, since his countenance was unfamiliar--should walk forth at the dawn and speak as if this morning saunter were to death, never entered her head. She stammered: “Oh, sir!” to his compliment, and paused, her lip quivering over the inarticulate sense of her own awkwardness. “Have you been gathering apples?” quoth he, still smiling on her. “Ay, sir,” she said; “to make preserve withal;” and faltered yet again, “my lord.” “Ay,” approved he. “It has a fair sound in your mouth. Would I were your lord! What is your name?” She told him “Pomona.” Whereat he laughed, and repeated it as if he liked the sound. Then he looked at the east, and behold, the sun had risen, a full ball of crimson in a swimming sea of rose. The light glimmered upon his pale cheek, and on the fine laces of his shirt, redly, as if with stains of new blood. “I must hence,” he said, and his voice had a stern, far-away sound. “Farewell, Pomona; wilt thou not wish me well?” “My lord?” “Wilt thou not?” “Oh, indeed, my lord, I do.” And she was moved, on a sudden, she knew not why, and the tears gathered like a mist in her eyes. “With all my heart,” she said. He made her a final bow, bending till his curls fell over his face. “I thank you.” She watched him walk away from her in and out the apple trees with his careless stride, and leap the little ditch again; and so on down the road. And when he was lost to her sight, she still stood looking at the point where the way dipped and vanished and she had seen the last flutter of the gray feathers. After a while she drew a long sigh and passed her hands over her eyes, as if she were awakening from a dream. Then she began mechanically to fill her basket once more. All the ruddiness faded from the sky. The sun swam up into the blue, and a white brilliance laid hold of the dewy valley. Delicate gossamer threads floated high above the apple trees, against the vault of ever-deeper blue. Somewhere from the hidden folds of the land a church bell began to chime. Then all at once Pomona dropped her basket, and while the apples rolled, yellow, green and red, in all directions, she set off running in the direction the gentleman had taken.