“True it is, and more: for it is not even by Concobar’s will that I roam the woodlands. He was fain that I should never leave the rath save with Lavarcam, and that I should spend most of my days within the stone walls of the dreary lios where he has doomed me to dwell.” “Darthool, my heart is filled with a rising tide. That tide is love. Thou hast not seen the sea: but there, when the tide flows, there is nothing, there is no one, in all the world, which can say it nay. So is my love for thee, that now rises; and, once thine, will be thine evermore. Yet I would not put this upon thee; and if thy words and looks come out of thy frank, sweet courtesy and open maidenly heart, and mean no more than that thou carest for me as a brother, it is thy brother I will be, Darthool, to serve thee and succour thee and love thee evermore, and in that way only.” For a brief while she looked at him. Then the noon-blue of her eyes deepened, and a flush drifted through her face and waned into the deeper red of her parted lips. “Nathos,” she said in a low voice, which trembled as a reed in the wind, “I, too, love. It is thee I love. If it be wrong for me, a maiden, to speak thus, forgive me, for I have grown wilding here, and am more akin to the fawns of the forest than to women kind of mine own age or estate. But I love thee, Nathos: as of old, in the far-off Dedannan days, Dectura the queen loved the Green Harper, and went forth with him and was seen no more of her own people.” “If thou indeed wilt have it so, Darthool, be thou my Dectura, and let me be thy Green Harper. For beyond the reach of life or death is the greatness of the love I feel for thee, even now in this first hour of our meeting.” “Thy words are in my heart, Nathos; and because that this is so, I now put _geas_ upon thee. Let thy sword be as my sword, and be thou to me as brother and friend and the holder of my leal love; and to this end, lo! I throw this yellow thistle against thy cheek, to raise a mark of shame there if thou dost not fulfil the bond, and there to be seen of all men as a sign and witness of thy disgrace; yea, even thus I put _geas_ upon thee, to succour me in my ill fate, to take me unto thyself, to give thyself unto me, and to let us go forth together heedless of Fate.” Nathos looked at her with proud eyes. “Of a surety, Darthool, there is no hero of the Red Branch who hath a courage greater than thine, even though it may be that thou speakest the more freely from knowing little of what may befall.” “What can befall save death, and dost thou fear death, son of Usna?” Nathos smiled out of grave eyes.