“You are a poet, I always say, Damastor—you have so much imagination, and you play with your experiences, ask questions of them, try to find words for them. I’m a very simple person—I’m just in love with you, all of me in love. It is dream enough for me to see you, here in the shadow, or in the moonlight, or in sunlight. Just to see you, to be at your side, to feel you near!”

“Adraste, do you remember the first time we met—that is, to meet? When my mother asked me to go for the jar of water, and asked you to help me, and you came along so demurely?”

“Your mother wouldn’t ask me now to help you, would she! Do you remember that next time, when Helen brought me to your mother’s house, and your mother sent me to the other end of the garden, and so arranged it herself, without meaning to, that you came out and talked to me?”

“Do I remember! My mother will never be the same person again, we gave her such a shock. Adraste, she still thinks I hadn’t met you before; she insists she never asked you to help with the water-jar.”

“Well, even if we hadn’t met before, you might have come out.”

“Mother thinks not—she thinks you bewitched me, got me there by magic. In a way she’s right. But she oughtn’t to say she didn’t ask you to help, that other time.”

“She didn’t notice me, I suppose, Damastor—her mind was on the jar of water.”

“You mean, she didn’t notice how beautiful you were. When she saw that, the day in the garden, she was afraid of you.”

“Am I so terrible, Damastor?”

“Fatal, I should say.”

“It’s love that’s fatal, Damastor … Damastor, have you thought out any plan for us yet—what we’re to do?”

“I think of it all the time, Adraste, and the best thing still seems to wait a little longer, and keep our happiness, our happy secret, to ourselves. We couldn’t be happier than we have been, and are—could we? The responsibility is mine, and I think I can manage my parents best if I don’t break the news too suddenly; they’re both very stubborn over any unexpected news they don’t like. I can’t think what else to do.”

“Damastor, my dear lover, it’s a happy secret, as you say—but I can’t keep it much longer.”

“You mean—you mean—”

“Of course I mean! There, don’t be so frightened. I told you before, and now it’s dawning on you, as our love did—it is our love again, isn’t it! In a little while everyone will know. Why shouldn’t they? I’m happy and proud, Damastor; it’s altogether beautiful. But I wish it weren’t a secret! Why shouldn’t we go right out and say to any who will listen, Damastor and Adraste are given to each other, given by their love, forever? I don’t see what they could do, except envy us. Your mother wouldn’t like me at first—she loves you too much to care for any girl who takes you away—but in time I could make her like me. Your father would be kind to us.”