from week's
end to week's end.' If you will be so particular,' she said, take a
bath every Saturday night and spend your Sundays with me, as fair as
when you were a babe. And before you go to work again on Monday you
shall once more conceal your fairness past all men's penetration.'
But, dear Great-Aunt,' I pleaded, it may be that the day will come
when I might not wish--'"

And here, dear maidens, Viola faltered. And William put his arm about
her a little tighter--because it was there already--and said, "What
might you not wish, beloved?" And she murmured, "To be concealed past
one man's penetration. And my Great-Aunt said I need not worry. Because
though men, she said, were fools, there was one time in every man's
life when he was quick enough to penetrate all obscurities, whether it
were a layer of soot or a night without a moon." And she hid her face
on the King's shoulder, and he tried to kiss her but could not make her
look up until he said, "Or even a woman's waywardness?" Then she looked
up of her own accord and kissed him.

"In this way," she resumed, "it became my custom on each Saturday,
after closing the forge, to come here with my woman's raiment, and wait
in a hollow until night had fallen, and make myself clean of the week's
blackness. For I dared not do this by daylight, or be seen going forth
from my forge in my proper person."

"But why did you choose to bathe at midnight?" asked the King.

She was silent for a few moments, and then said hurriedly, "I did not
choose to bathe at midnight until a month ago.--For the rest," she
resumed, "I was hard to please in the matter of the shoes because I
knew that when they were finished you would ride away. And therefore
the more you improved the crosser I became. And if I have tormented you
for a month it was because you tormented me by refusing to speak when
you saw me here, in spite of your hateful vow; and you would not even
look at my cake in the larder."

"Women are strange," said the King. "How do you know I did not look at
the cake?"

"I do know," she said as hurriedly as before. "And if I would not tell
you who I was, it was because I could not bear, on the other hand, to
extort from you a love you seemed so reluctant to endure; until indeed
it became of its own accord too strong even for the purpose which
brought you every week to the Ring. For I knew that purpose, since all
dwellers in Washington know why men go up the hill with the new moon."