Martin Valliant unsaddled and unbridled the horses while Mellis took the pitcher¹ and went down to the spring.  
She did not hurry herself, but walked slowly through the bracken and under the full shade of the trees, her eyes looking into the distance as though she were deep in thought. Once or twice she smiled, and pressed her hand over her heart. Her face had a soft white radiance, a mysterious glow beneath the skin.
 
The spring was the beginning of one of the forest streams, a brown pool that overflowed² and trickled³ in a green and oozy⁴ dampness down the hillside. The clear water lay like a mirror, reflecting the branches and the fragments of blue sky overhead. Mellis knelt down and gazed at herself in the pool. She was very fair, with dark and desirous eyes, and she loved herself for Martin’s sake. Her hair came falling from under her hood⁵, and one strand⁶ touched the water, stirring a faint and transient ripple⁷.
 
Mellis filled her pitcher and went back to the glade⁸. The west was a glory of gold, the light smiting⁹ the trees and spreading a yellow glow upon the grass. The distant forest vistas¹⁰ were all purple, shading into a violet horizon. Somewhere a blackbird was singing to his mate.
 
She saw Martin Valliant sitting at the foot of a great oak, and staring at the sunset. The slanting¹¹ light touched his face and made it shine with a strange yet somber¹² fire. So absorbed was he that he did not see Mellis coming through the bracken. The two horses were cropping the grass; saddles, harness, and saddle-bags lay piled under Martin’s oak tree.
 
Mellis caught a deep breath, and laid a hand upon her bosom¹³.
 
“Martin—Martin Valliant!”
 
Her voice was very soft and challenging. Martin turned, looked at her strangely, and stood up.
 
“Dreams!”
 
Her eyes were full of light.
 
“Yet men must live by bread.”
 
She set the pitcher on the grass, opened the saddle-bags, and spread their supper on the grass. Martin stood and watched her, mute, frowning, like a man breathless from a sudden pain at the heart.
 
“Mellis!”
 
“Dear lad?”
 
“I have been thinking.”
 
She went on calmly with her work, cutting the bread with a knife she had brought from Marvel’s cottage, and spreading honey upon the slices.
 
“What troubles you, Martin?”
 
He did not answer for a moment. She knelt, looking up at him; the obstinate¹⁴ anguish¹⁵ in his eyes betrayed to her all that was in his heart.
 
“Come, you are tired; you shall eat and sleep.”
 
She spread a cloak and made a rest of one of the saddles, talking the while as though no love-crisis threatened them.
 
“I know what it is to be weary, to feel that death might take you, and you would not care. Then one falls down under a haystack and sleeps, and in the morning the sun is shining, and the world seems young again. Wine and water, cooked meat, bread and honey and a spiced cake! Let us be thankful.”
 
He lay down some two paces from her, propping¹⁶ himself on one elbow and not using the saddle that she had fetched to serve as a rest. His eyes avoided hers. Mellis had spread the slices of meat on a great green dock leaf, and she held out the dish with both hands.
 
“Eat, and then you shall talk to me.”
 
It was a silent meal, but Mellis had her way. She did not trouble him with words, or by watching him with questioning eyes. He was like a restive^{17<............}