He stood at the moment beside a great rock, clothed in a plush of lichen, which stuck from the hillside in a leafy place, and it seemed that the sound had come from behind that covert. Listening, and hearing no more, he turned and, wading in a sea of green, doubled the corner of the promontory--and saw her. She sat cross-legged like a Turk, her hands clasped about her knees, in a little mossy alcove so formed for a natural bower that nothing could have been prettier or more secure. There was a fence about it of the silver-birch sapling; its floor was level grass; hidden from all else, she could yet command through the trees a view of the lovely glen, with the shining river looping through it. Brion, standing waist-deep in bush, looked up at his goddess, like a young Leander rising from the sea; and she, for her part, returned his look--it seemed without apprehension. So they remained, both speechless, till something happened: two little tell-tale dimples suddenly appeared at the wings of the girl’s short nose and flickered there. They meant--a characteristic feature which Brion came to love--that she must break the spell or laugh. ‘I am not going to laugh,’ she said, instantly and haughtily, to Brion’s expectant eyes. ‘What are you doing here?’ ‘Is it a private seat?’ answered the boy. ‘I had not known it.’ ‘If I choose to make it private----’ began the girl. ‘You should not cough,’ he said. ‘If I happen to have a cold----’ ‘You do not look as if you had.’ ‘Thank you for the rudeness. It is only such as I should expect from you.’ ‘You remember me, then?’ ‘Alack! I have good reason.’ ‘I prithee forgive me, mistress. You would, if you knew how I had suffered in my mind. I thanked you for that cough!’ ‘Did you think it was uttered to attract you?’ ‘If I dared to hope so!’ ‘Insolence! Well, it was.’ ‘It was!’ He cried it in rapture. ‘Then you wanted to speak to me--to forgive me?’ ‘I will hear your story first.’ So the inquisitive jade confessed herself. ‘O, O! May I come up beside you?’ She regarded him from under superior lids; and then the little dimples flickered again. Leaning back against the rock, she patted the turf beside her. ‘Come.’ He was by her side in a moment. He could hardly believe in his happiness. She was the prettiest flower of a maid he had ever seen--hat and garb all the gray dove of his memory. ‘If you knew,’ he said; ‘if you knew!’ ‘What, please?’ ‘How I have dreamt of this meeting. Ever since that day I have been looking and longing for you.’ ‘Methinks I should not let you so speak to me. Besides, I am little enough to look at.’ ‘I think you are my Heaven, Mistress.’ ‘You speak bold for a boy, Master Middleton.’ ‘What! You know my name?’ ‘Is it a secret, then? Who does not know whose name on these moors?’ ‘I know not yours.’ ‘Would you know it?’ ‘_Would_ I!’ ‘I think I shall not tell you.’ ‘Then I will ask none other than yourself, lest coarser lips should desecrate it.’