The maids had parted in noisy flight, each on her different errand, starched gowns crackling, clogs clacking, pails clinking as they went. Ellinor threw down her cloak and her basket and disappeared, light as the lapwing, rejoicing with all a woman’s joy to minister to the beloved. She returned with a little wooden table, which, smiling, she set before him and was gone again. This time it was out into the yard and into the dairy, and her head flashed in a sun-shaft. When she reappeared, she was walking more slowly, and between her hands was a yellow glazed bowl brimming with new-drawn milk. “For you, Sir David,” she said. It was foaming and fragrant of clover blossom as he lifted it to his lips. “And now,” she went on, “you shall taste of my baking. I had a batch set last night and the rolls ought to be crisp to a touch.” The following minute brought her back, flushed and triumphant, bearing on a tray a smoking brown loaflet, a ray of amber honey and a rustic basket full of strawberries. She paused a second reflectively, and cried: “A pat of fresh-churned butter!” And again his eyes watched her cross the shaft of sunshine and come back, and they were the eyes of a man gazing on a dear and lovely picture. “Now, David, is this not a breakfast fit for a king?” He looked at the table and then at her; and then put down the loaf his long fingers had been absently crushing. “And you?” he asked and rose. “You—the queen?” “I? Oh, I think I forgot myself. Oh, don’t get up, David. Don’t, please! You cannot imagine how much refreshed I shall feel when you have eaten. There, then, I will sit beside you. But as there is no pleasure in waiting upon oneself, I must call up a court menial. Katy! A bowl of milk for me. Rosemary, another roll from the oven!” This was to remain a memory of gold in Ellinor’s life. Poets may sing as they will of the joys of mutual love confessed. But there is an hour more exquisite yet in man and woman’s life: the hour of love still untold. The hour of trembling hopes and uncertainties; of ecstasies hidden away in the inmost sanctuary of the being; of dreams so much more beautiful than reality; of thoughts that no words can clothe and music that no instrument can render. Hour of doubt which is to certainty as the dawn is to the day, as mystery is to revelation: as much more enthralling, as much more exquisite.