"Pray God you take me for your loyal lover. My soul has lived alone for this moment, my little life has been spared for this grace." So he began, and then for the first time in all her age-long life the dryad heard the splendid, the terrible words that govern the reeling world. "I love you," the man cried from the heart of his heart, and again, "I love you," and yet again, "I love you"--the mystical three words repeated mystically three times, as is meet in the litany of love. He would have caught her in his arms, but she held his hands fast, and for all his strength he could not pluck them away from her grasp. Joy and sorrow struggled for the supremacy of her being. "Do you really love me, you mortal man, me whom you have never seen before this night?" she asked, with a tender pity, with a tender irony. The pity was for him, the about-to-die loving the undying; the irony was for her, that she spoke with the speech of doubt knowing with all her heart that he loved her, knowing with all her heart that she loved him. "I am a mortal man," Rainouart answered, passionately, "as you are a mortal woman; but love is immortal, and true knights who are true lovers only think so of love. They ride and they ride and they see fair faces in lattice or orchard, and they vow the world is a pleasant place; but they pay no heed to the fair faces, and they ride on in the quest of the rose. Then at a thoughtless turn of the road they see one face and the world is heaven or hell--heaven if they win and wear the rose, hell if they may not attain to its petals. No, not so," he corrected himself, quickly, "for to love the loveliest is well whether she smile or frown, and so, come what may, it is my glory to love you, but I wish you could love me a little." She answered in racking anguish to the rapture of the man: "I think I could love you very dearly, but I do not think it would be wise." "Do not mistrust me," he pleaded. "I could be nothing but loyal to my lover, loyal to the death." As the words rang from his lips Argathona gave a great cry, and loosing her hold of him covered her face with her hands like a frightened child, and her body shook with sobs. "Alas, to the death!" she wailed, shuddering at the gulf between them and the doom laid upon immortals to see their mortal lovers die. Rainouart trembled; liberated from her fingers, his life seemed to ebb again furiously, the very strength her touch had given him made him the weaker at the withdrawal of that contact. His wound ran red anew, and the hurt in his head burned horridly. But he cried vehemently, catching at his breath: "We must all die, young or old, gentle or simple; but we die in the hope of salvation, and to-day we two live, to-day I love you, to-day I pray God that you may love me."