her strong slim legs, her
strong and lovely arms. As white as mayblossom she was, and beauty went
forth from her like fragrance from the shaken bough. So he knelt on his
side and she stood on hers, both motionless, but gazing into each
other's eyes, and his heart broke (even as it had broken at the bird's
song) with a passion to take her in his arms, for it seemed to him that
this alone would mend its breaking. Or if he might not do this, at
least to send his need of her in a great cry across the Pond. And as
his passion grew she slowly lifted her arms and opened them to him as
though to bid him enter; and her lips parted, and she cried out, as
though she were uttering the cry of his own soul:

"Beloved!"

All the joy and the pain, fulfilled, of the bird's song were gathered
in that word.

Glorified he leaped up, his whole being answering the cry of hers, but
before his lips could translate it he was gripped by a mighty agony,
and sneeze after sneeze shook all his senses, so that he was utterly
helpless. When he was able to look up again he saw the woman moving
towards him round the Pond, and suddenly he clapped his hands over his
eyes and fled towards the Ring, as though pursued by demons. Here he
passed the remainder of the night, but in what sort of prayers I leave
you to imagine; as also amid what ravings he passed his Sunday.

On Monday the Lad was again before him at the forge, and a crow's wing
had looked milky beside his face. He did not raise his eyes as the King
came in, but said:

"You look very ill." He said it furiously.

"I have had nightmares," said the King. "Pardon me if you can. I will
get to work and make my final shoe."

But though he now had little more to learn in his craft, the Lad, when
the shoe was made, picked it up in his pincers and flung it to the
other end of the forge; yet the King now knew enough to know that few
smiths could have made its equal. So he looked surprised; at which the
Lad, controlling himself, said:

"When I pass your fourth shoe you will need no more masters--I forged a
shoe like that one yonder when I was fifteen, and my father said of it,
You will make a smith one day.'"

And on neither Tuesday nor Wednesday nor Thursday nor Friday could the
King succeed in pleasing the Lad; the better his shoes the angrier grew
his young master that they were not good enough. Yet between these
gusts of temper he was gentle and remorseful, and once the King saw
tears in his e