"Thou hast no need," he said. "Besides, thou art right. I know nothing of women. I do not even know, it seems, how they should be treated, or how to please them. Otherwise," he added with his warm smile, "I should not have offended thee this morning by kissing the damsel who sang so sweetly." The countess smiled, and turned toward him with her face full of light. They had not dismounted, but had halted their horses near the margin of the brook on the banks of which the heron had been feeding lower down. "That," she said, "is not a thing to be taught. It is learned from the air and from the birds." "Then why has it not been revealed to me? I have been much in the forest." "To kill the birds! In good sooth, I know not that one may learn of the air and the woods who goes as thou goest, with falcon and boar-spear. But at least," she added, regarding him with a smile, "thou must know that when one loves--" She broke off suddenly, and turned away her face, with a flush creeping up into her cheek. "Well," Albrecht demanded eagerly, "what then?" "I was but thinking," she returned, in a voice lower than before, "that certainly every man knoweth that when one truly loveth another, he will care for the caress of none save only the loved one." "I had never thought of that," the knight responded gravely. "Then of a surety thou hast never known what it is to love." "By that token, never," he answered, smiling; "albeit it were possible that the test would not hold; and in any case it were not difficult, perchance, for thee to teach me." The Countess Erna looked into his face all flushed and radiant, and there was that in her eyes which no man could see and fail to understand; and although the squire waiting hard by might not note that aught had been said or done out of the ordinary course, none the less had their hearts spoken each to each from that moment. Erna wheeled her horse, and began to move toward the entrance of the valley; and as Albrecht rode beside her, he suddenly leaned forward and caught her palfrey's rein, so that the beast was almost thrown upon his haunches with the abruptness of his arrest. "Do not ride toward the upper ford," he said; "the nix is in an evil mood to-day, and mayhap might do thee a mischief in her spitefulness." Erna looked at him with astonishment and alarm. "And how knowest thou of the moods of the nix?" she demanded. His eyes fell, and a flush stained his swarthy cheek. Then he seemed to recover his self-possession. "It is a knowledge," he replied, "that is learned from the air and from the birds, but only by those who are in sympathy with the woodland creatures so that they may comprehend it." Erna laughed merrily, and turned her palfrey toward the lower ford. "In sober sooth, thou knowest no more of the nix than do I," she told him; "but I mind not if I please thy fancy." But when alone in her chamber she thought of this, she crossed herself and shivered a little with a not unpleasing awe. VI