"And you will never put your kiss upon a woman's lips? Never put your heart upon a woman's heart? Is it of cold sea water you are made--for even the running water in the streams is warmed by the sun? Tell me, Cathal, would you leave Molios the Culdee,--if--" The monk of Christ suddenly flashed his eyes upon the woman. "If what, Ardanna?" he asked abruptly: "if what, Ardanna that is so witching fair?" "If I loved you, Cathal? If I, the daughter of Ecta the chief, loved you, and took you to be my man, and you took me to be your woman, would you be content so?" He stared at her as one in a dream. Then suddenly all the foolish madness that had been put upon him by Colum fell away. What did these old men, Colum and Molios, know? It is only the young who know what life is. They were old, and their blood was gelid. He put up his arms, as though in prayer. Then he smiled. Ardanna saw a light in his eyes that sprang into her heart and sang a song there that whirled in her ears and dazzled her eyes and made her feel as though she had fallen over a great height and were still falling. Cathal was no longer pale. A red flame burned in either cheek. The sunset-light behind him filled his hair with fire. His eyes were beacons. "Cathal, Cathal!" "Come, Ardanna!" That was all. What need to say more. She was in his arms, and her heart throbbing against his that leapt in his body like a wolf fallen in a snare. He stooped and kissed her. She lifted her eyes, and his brain swung. She kissed him, and he kissed her till she gave a low cry and gently thrust him back. He laughed. "Why do you laugh, Cathal?" "I? It is I who laugh now. The old men put a spell upon me. I am no more Cathal Gille-Muire, but Cathal mac Art. Nay, I am Cathal Gille-Ardanna." With that he plucked the branch of a rowan that grew near. He stripped it of its leaves, and threw them from him north, south, east, and west. "Why do you do that, Cathal-aluinn?" Ardanna asked, looking at him with eyes of love, and she like a summer morning there, because of the sunshine in her hair, and the wild roses on her face, and the hill-tarn blue of her eyes. "These are all the hymns that Colum taught me. I give them back. I am knowing them no more. They are idle, foolish songs." Then the monk took the branch and broke it, and threw the pieces upon the ground and trampled upon them. "Why do you that, Cathal-aluinn?" asked Ardanna, wondering at him with her home-call eyes. "That is the branch of all the wisdom Colum taught me. Old Neis, the helot, was wise. It is a madness, all that. See, it is gone: it is beneath my feet: I am a man now." "But O Cathal, Cathal! this very day of the days, Ecta, my father, has become a man of the Christ-faith, him and his; and he would do what Molios asked, now. And Molios would ask your death." "Death is a dream." With that Cathal leaned forward and kissed Ardanna upon the lips twice. "A kiss for life that," he said; "and that a kiss for death."