“Now that winter’s gone, the earth has lost Her snow-white robes, and now no more the frost Candies the grass or casts an icy cream Upon the silver lake or crystal stream; Now do the choir of chirping minstrels bring In triumph to the world the youthful spring: The valleys, woods and hills in rich array Welcome the coming of the longed-for May. Now all things smile, only my love doth lower Nor hath the scalding noon-day sun the power To melt that marble ice, which still doth hold Her heart congealed and makes her pity cold. How shall we call it spring when she doth carry June in her eyes, in her heart January?” —in a half-whisper, yet joyously, with laughing lips, as Cleudi might have done it, passing one hand around her shoulders, with the other holding tight to her hand. “A northern lord to complain of the cold? And to instruct the Prophet of Love in love?” she said, in Countess Aiella’s thrilling voice. (If it were only this one.) “I will not grant your right to sue until you have proved love your prophet.” “Ah, that would be epicene,” said Rodvard (the fired-wine working in him; but it was too dim to wring truth from her eyes). “You must convert yourself to a woman before you can convert me to your sacred love.” “Oh, love does not remain true love when its longings are satisfied; therefore the sacred, which can never be satisfied, is above the profane,” she said, stepping to one of the chairs at the table with a graceful play of ankle. Her hands went up to slip off the head-mask, and she sat back, hair falling round her shoulders. “I am a little weary, my lord of Kjermanash; give me something to drink that will warm your wintry wit.” Her fingers toyed with a goblet, but he took one of the festival-cups from his belt, poured it full, then as she drank, disengaged it from her fingers and finished it himself, lips carefully at the place where hers had touched the edge. “Not worthy of you, my lord. Is this the promised originality? Go catch servant-girls with such tricks.” “Alas,” he said, using the same half-whisper (the voice was the danger-point). “True love and longing has no tricks, only the expression by every means of its desire. Let us contest your heresy that satisfied longing is the end of love; for in love, the momentary assuagement only leads to further longings.” He poured her more from the bottle, and this time took the other cup himself. (The glint of her eye, momentarily caught, held some slight anticipation of pleasure, but there was more in it of weariness with the world.) “Ah, if it only would,” she said, and turned her lovely head aside. “I am hungry, my lord.”