There was the lovely world—­which way to it?  And the window that in a dream had seemed to her to open was mayhap closed, and another that she had not noted mayhap opening....  But Glenfernie, winged, was in that world, and now all that he desired was that the bright bird should fly to him there.  But until to-day patience and caution and much humility had kept him from direct speech.  He knew that she had not loved, as he had done, at once.  He had set himself to win her to love him.  But so great was his passion that now he thought: 

“Surely not one, but two as one, make this terrible and happy furnace!” He thought, “I will speak now,” and then delayed over the words.

“This is a bonny, wee place!” said Elspeth.  “Did you never hear the old folks tell that your great-grandmother, that was among the persecuted, loved it?  When your father was a laddie they often used to sit here, the two of them.  They were great wanderers together.”

“I never heard it,” said Alexander.  “Almost it seems too bright....”

They sat in silence, but the train of thought started went on with Glenfernie: 

“But perhaps she never went so far as the Kelpie’s Pool.”

“The Kelpie’s Pool!...  I do not like that place!  Tell me, Glenfernie, wonders of travel.”

“What shall I tell you?”

“Tell me of the East.  Tell me what like is the Sea of Galilee.”

Glenfernie talked, since Elspeth bade him talk.  He talked of what he had seen and known, and that brought him, with the aid of questions from the woman listening, to talk of himself.  “I had a strange kind of youth....  So many dim, struggling longings, dreams, aspirings!—­but I think they may be always there with youth.”

“Yes, they are,” said Elspeth.

“We talked of the Kelpie’s Pool.  Something like that was the strangeness with me.  Black rifts and whirlpools and dead tarns within me, opening up now and again, lifted as by a trembling of the earth, coming up from the past!  Angers and broodings, and things seen in flashes—­then all gone as the lightning goes, and the mind does not hold what was shown....  I became a man and it ceased.  Sometimes I know that in sleep or dream I have been beside a kelpie pool.  But I think the better part of me has drained them where they lay under open sky.”  He laughed, put his hands over his face for a moment, then, dropping them, whistled to the blackbirds aloft in the oak-tree.

“And now?”

“Now there is clean fire in me!” He turned to her; he drew himself nearer over the sward.  “Elspeth, Elspeth, Elspeth! do not tell me that you do not know that I love you!”

“Love me—­love me?” answered Elspeth.  She rose from her earthen chair; she moved as if to leave the place; then she stood still.  “Perhaps a part of me knew and a part did not know....  I will try to be honest, for you are honest, Glenfernie!  Yes, I knew, but I would not let myself perceive and think and say that I knew....  And now what will I say?”