She was stirred by his passionate enthusiasm, by the vehemence of his speech, by the earnest meaning in his eyes. Loving him, she was eager to be loved according to the simple creed of the woodland, and she tried like him to forget the unavoidable. "Give me your love," he cried to her again. "Give me your love. Come with me into the wide world. I am Rainouart of the Rock, son of the Duke of Athens. You shall live like a queen in the sweet city." A sudden pain tugged at the dryad's heart, and she shook her head sadly. This was not what she understood by love, to go and dwell among mortals and watch them die as summer flies die in a day. "If I gave you my love," she said, "I could not go with you into the wide world. My life is here in the ancient wood." Resolve ruled Rainouart's forehead with strong lines. He was so sure that this was the love of his life, and that to love like this was truly to live, that he was ready to pay his price for paradise. "Then I will dwell with you in the ancient wood," he answered. "The world is a fine place, full of color and music and honorable strife, but true love is better than all things, and if you love me I will dwell with you in the ancient wood." The dryad sighed. She longed with all her heart to say yes, longed and dared not. She knew now how her mother felt when the Greek youth wooed her in the days before the heroes sailed to Troy. "It may not be," she said, but she said it half-heartedly, petitioning secretly if, after all, it might not be. Perhaps she might keep his spirit alive within him with her immortal lips, perhaps she might hold death off with her immortal arms as the demi-god Herakles did when he brought back Alkestis. The impetuous Rainouart, lip-deep in love, made light of her denial. Heaven had been very gracious to him and he would not lose the rose. What was there to weep for in his father's court? Could its drunken chief and dissolute women and debauched princes restrain him from the religious quiet of the wood? What was there in all Athens to be set against a moment of Argathona's love? "It must be," he persisted; "we are troth-plighted, you and I. We have exchanged loves and hearts and cannot deny it." He drew a ring from his finger as he spoke, a heavy gold ring cunningly carved with the image of our Lord upon the tree, and set about with little studs of gold wherewith to say the rosary. "This is my Master and thine," he whispered. "Wear it and be mine." She put the ring and his hand away from her, troubled by his words and by the unknown image on the ring. Rainouart misunderstood her gesture. "Dear," he protested, "I mean all honor and honesty with you. With this ring I will wed you. Hear, my dear lady. A little way beyond the wood between here and Athens there lives apart a holy man; let us go to him hand-in-hand that he may make us man and wife."