The Prince caught her in his arms, “One way is my way!” he cried. “Your way,” she said, “is my way.” Then, when he had finished kissing her, she said, “Look, on my finger is a ring; this ring is for him to whom I give myself in marriage. Surely, it opens to him the heart of my own people, and he becomes one of us, a child of the Moon.” She showed him an opal ring, full of fires. “If your way is my way,” she said, “draw this off my finger, and put it upon your own, and take me to be your wife!” So the Prince drew off the ring from her finger, and set it upon his own; and as he did so he felt indeed the heart of the Moon-people become his own, and the love of the Moon strike root in him. Yet did the love of the Earth remain his as well, making it seem as if all the love in his heart had but doubled itself. So he and the most beautiful Berenice were married there by the light of the new Moon, and all thought of sorrow or danger from the encirclement that bound them was lost in their great joy. During the whole of the next day the Prince went on with his digging, making a broad shallow in the ground. “Before the full Moon comes,” he said, “I will make it deep.” And he worked on, refusing to take any rest. The Princess loved him more and more as she watched him; and his love for her daily increased, for every day, while the Moon grew full, her beauty shone in greater perfection and splendour. “Here,” she said to him, “the coming of the full Moon is like the coming of Spring to me: I feel it in my blood. After the full Moon my beauty will wane and grow paler. But in my own land I do not feel these changes, for there it is always the full Moon.” The Prince answered her, “To me your beauty, though it grows more, will not ever grow less.” At last, on the day before that of the full Moon, the pit which he had dug was broad and deep; then he began to fill it with water from the well. “To-morrow,” he said to his wife, when the pool was nearly full, as she came and stood by his side at sunset in the full blaze of her beauty, “to-morrow we shall be free; and you will carry me away with you into your own land.” “I do not know,” said the Princess, “I begin to be afraid!” and she sighed heavily. “Any day the Red Mole may come: one day is not too soon for him to be here.” “But why need you fear him now?” asked the Prince. “Since you are married to me, you cannot be married to him.” “As to that,” said she, “I fear that to have outwitted him will but make his malice all the greater against us!” Then she walked softly among the moonbeams, bathing her hands in them, and letting them fall upon the loveliness of her face; and as she stood in their light, tears rained down out of her eyes.