ghed and said, "I had hoped otherwise. For, dear, I cannot rest
until I have helped them." Then he told her as much as he knew of his
four brothers; and her face clouded as he spoke, and her eyes looked
hurt and angry by turns, and her beautiful mouth turned sulky. So then
Hobb put his arm round her and said, "Do not be too troubled, for I
know I shall presently find the cause and cure of these boys' ills."
But Margaret pushed his arm away and rose restlessly to her feet, and
paced up and down, muttering, "What do I care for these boys? It is not
for them I am troubled, but for myself and you."

"For us?" said Hobb. "How can trouble touch us who love each other?"

At this Margaret threw herself on the grass beside him, and laid her
head against his knee, and drew his hands to her, pressing them against
her eyes and lips and throat and bosom as though she would never let
them go; and through her kisses she whispered passionately, "Do you
love me? do you truly love me? Oh, if you love me do not go away
immediately. For I have only just found you, but your brothers have had
you all their lives. And presently you shall go where you please for
their sakes, but now stay a little in this wood for mine. Stay a month
with me, only a month! oh, my heart, is a month much to ask when you
and I found each other but an hour ago? For this time of love will
never come again, and whatever other times there are to follow, if you
go now you will be shutting your eyes upon the lovely dawn just as the
sun is rising through the colors. And when you return, you will return
perhaps to love's high-noon, but you will have missed the dawn for
ever." And then she lifted her prone body a little higher until it
rested once more in the curve of his arm against his heart, and she lay
with her white face upturned to his, and her dark soft eyes full of
passion and pleading, and she put up her fingers to caress his cheek,
and whispered, "Give me my little month, oh, my heart, and at the end
of it I will give you your soul's desire."

And not Hobb or any man could have resisted her.

So he promised to remain with her in Open Winkins, and not to go
further on his quest till the next moon. And indeed, with all time
before and behind him it did not seem much to promise, nor did he think
it could hurt his brothers' case. But the kernel of it was that he
longed to make the promise, and could not do otherwise than make the
promise, and so, in short, he made