Mistress Mary wore a mask of black velvet to screen her face from the sun, and only her sweet forehead and her great blue eyes and the rose-leaf tip of her chin showed.

All that low, swampy country was lush and green that April morning, with patches of grass gleaming like emeralds in the wetness of sunken places and unexpected pools of marsh water gleaming out of the distances like sapphires.  The blossoms thrust out toward us from every hand like insistent arms of beauty.  There was a frequent bush by the wayside full of a most beautiful pink-horned flower, so exceeding sweet that it harmed the worth of its own sweetness, and its cups seemed fairly dripping with honey and were gummed together with it.  There were patches of a flower of a most brilliant and wonderful blue colour, and spreads as of cloth of gold from cowslips over the lowlands.  The road was miry in places, and then I would fall behind her farther still that the water and red mud splashing from beneath my horse’s hoofs might not reach her.  Then, finally, after I had done thus some few times, she reined in her Merry Roger, and looked over her shoulder with a flash of her blue eyes which compelled mine.

“Why do you ride so far away, Master Wingfield?” said she.

I lifted my hat and bent so low in my saddle that the feather on it grazed the red mud.

“Because I fear to splash your fine tabby petticoat, Madam,” I answered.

“I care not for my fine petticoat,” said she in a petulant way, like that of a spoiled child who is forbidden sweets and the moon, and questions love in consequence, yet still there was some little fear and hesitation in her tone.  Mistress Mary was a most docile pupil, seeming to have great respect for my years and my learning, and was as gentle under my hand as was her Merry Roger under hers, and yet with the same sort of gentleness, which is as the pupil and not as the master decides, and let the pull of the other will be felt.

I answered not, yet kept at my distance, but at the next miry place she held in Merry Roger until I was forced to come up, and then she spoke again, and as she spoke a mock-bird was singing somewhere over on the bank of the river.

“Did you ever hear a sweeter bird’s song than that, Master Wingfield?” said she, and I answered that it was very sweet, as indeed it was.

“What do you think the bird is mocking, Master Wingfield?” said she, and then I answered like a fool, for the man who meets sweetness with his own bitterness and keeps it not locked in his own soul is a fool.

“I know not,” said I, “but he may be mocking the hope of the spring, and he may be mocking the hope in the heart of man.  The song seems too sweet for a mock of any bird which has no thought beyond this year’s nest.”

I spoke thus as I would not now, when I have learned that the soul of man, like the moon, hath a face which he should keep ever turned toward the Unseen, and Mistress Mary’s blue eyes, as helpless of comprehension as a flower, looked in mine.