"One shepherd on a hill isn't much for the eye of a star. He may watch them unwatched, while they come and go in their months. Sometimes there aren't any, and sometimes not more than one pricking the sky near the moon. But to-night, look! the sky's like a tree with full branches." Thea looked up and said with a child's laugh, "Break me a branch!" "I'd want Jacob's Ladder for that," smiled Young Gerard. "Then shake the tree and bring them down!" she insisted. "Here come your stars," said Young Gerard. Suddenly she was enveloped in a falling shower, white and heavenly. "The stars--!" she cried. "Oh, what is it?" "My cherry-tree--it's in flower--" said Young Gerard, and his voice trembled. She looked up quickly and saw that he was standing beside her, shaking the tree above her head. And now their eyes met and did not separate. He put out his hand and broke a branch from the tree and offered it to her. She took it from him slowly, as though she were in a dream, and laid it in her lap, and put her face in her hands and began to cry. Young Gerard whispered, "Why are you crying?" Thea said, "Oh, my wedding, my wedding! Only last year I thought of the night of my wedding and how it would be. It was not with torchlight and shouting and wine, but moonlight and silence and the scent of wild blossoms. And now I know that it was not the night of my wedding I dreamed of." "What did you dream of?" asked Young Gerard. "The night of my first love." "Thea," said Young Gerard, and he knelt beside her. "And my love's first kiss." "Oh, Thea," said Young Gerard, and he took her hands. "Why did you not feel their blows?" she said. "I felt them." Their arms went round each other, and for the second time that night they kissed. Young Gerard said, "I've always wondered if this would happen." And Thea answered, "I didn't know it would be you." "Didn't you? didn't you?" he whispered, stroking her head, wondering at himself doing what he had so often dreamed of doing. "Oh," she faltered, "sometimes I thought--it might--be you, darling." "Thea, Thea!" "When I came over the Mount to swim in the river, and saw you in the distance among your sheep, there was a swifter river running through all my body. When I came every April to ask for your cherry-tree, what did it matter to me that it was not in bloom? for all my heart was wild with bloom, oh, Gerard, my--lover!" "Oh, Thea, my love! What can I give you, Thea, I, a shepherd?" "You were the lord of the earth, and you gave me its flowers and its birds and its secret waters. What more could you give me, you, a shepherd and my lord?" "The wild white bloom of its fruit-trees that comes to the branches in April like love to the heart. I'll give it you now. Sit here, sit here! I'll make you a bower of the cherry, and a crown, and a carpet too. There's nothing in all April lovely and wild enough for you to-night, your bridal night, my lady and my darling!"