“Reason enough!” The group of young persons at the foot of the circle turned upon itself, and released the figure of a young man about thirty, tall and personable. “I have reason”—his voice shook, as though the words had been too long repressed in him and escaped bubblingly—“the best of reasons, for I ... we love....” He had hesitated an instant over the admission, wanting some quick assurance which flashed between the girl and him. Instantly it brought from the women, in whose care and keeping she had chiefly been, quick cries of protest and denial, falling almost on the stroke of his declaration. “But you”—Persilope voiced the general knowledge—“you have been these three years at River Ward, you have not seen her.” “Not for three years,” admitted the lover, “for as soon as I knew that I loved her I went away, that I might keep her honor and mine.” His thought worked uneasily, but he went on. “I have always loved her, but I had not told her so when it came my turn to serve with Mancha, and while I was away you chose her to be the Ward. I went back and served my time. When I returned to Deep Fern I saw her walking with the women in the cool of the morning and knew that I loved her. That was the year the water came down from Water Gate and tore up the valley. In the flood I carried her——” He smiled; the inexpressible joyousness of the woodlander broke upward in the remembrance. “The next day,” he said, “she sent me word to go back to River Ward, and I knew by that that she loved me. So I went, and by the evidence of the work I have done _you_ know how I have loved her.” “By the evidence of the faith I have kept,” said Daria, “you know how I have loved him.” All this time I could see the faces of the men, especially of the girl’s father and of Prassade, growing sterner. Trastevera looked down, studying the pattern of the meadow grass. Persilope bit his lip in the midst, with the Cup in his hand, and the lover grew bolder. “Is love so cheap a thing to you, Persilope, that you take it from us before we have tasted it? It is Daria I love as she is, as I have seen her grow from a child into a woman, not a stranger, looking at me with unremembering eyes. Let the men take up the Treasure and bury it again, as they did for Trastevera.” “There was a reason,” the chief began, and stopped, as if he knew that to argue was to lose. “Oh, a reason——” I do not know by what imperceptible degrees and mutual consentings the lovers had got across the open space to each other, but there they were, handfast, confronting him. “Reason you thought you had, but what good came of all your reasons seeing that Trastevera has lost the Far-Seeing for the sake of which she was excused from the Cup. Let them bury the Treasure again—or give it to the Far-Folk, for all I care, since nothing comes of it but wars and forgettings.”