I looked at my own clothes and shoes, drying
in the sun by the garden-wall, and hated them. What horrors they were
compared with the graceful costume which I now wore! I told her this
laughing, but she agreed with me very seriously. "We will throw them away," she said in a quiet voice. In my astonishment
I attempted to explain that I not only could not think of accepting
clothes from anybody, although for all I knew it might be the custom of
hospitality in that part of the country, but that I should cut an
impossible figure if I returned to France clothed as I was then. She laughed and tossed her pretty head, saying something in old French
which I did not understand, and then Pelagie trotted out with a tray on
which stood two bowls of milk, a loaf of white bread, fruit, a platter of
honey-comb, and a flagon of deep red wine. "You see I have not yet broken
my fast because I wished you to eat with me. But I am very hungry," she
smiled. "I would rather die than forget one word of what you have said!" I
blurted out, while my cheeks burned. "She will think me mad," I added to
myself, but she turned to me with sparkling eyes. "Ah!" she murmured. "Then Monsieur knows all that there is of chivalry--"

She crossed herself and broke bread. I sat and watched her white hands,
not daring to raise my eyes to hers. "Will you not eat?" she asked. "Why do you look so troubled?" Ah, why? I knew it now. I knew I would give my life to touch with my lips
those rosy palms--I understood now that from the moment when I looked
into her dark eyes there on the moor last night I had loved her. My great
and sudden passion held me speechless. "Are you ill at ease?" she asked again. Then, like a man who pronounces his own doom, I answered in a low voice:
"Yes, I am ill at ease for love of you." And as she did not stir nor
answer, the same power moved my lips in spite of me and I said, "I, who
am unworthy of the lightest of your thoughts, I who abuse hospitality and
repay your gentle courtesy with bold presumption, I love you." She leaned her head upon her hands, and answered softly, "I love you. Your words are very dear to me. I love you." "Then I shall win you." "Win me," she replied. But all the time I had been sitting silent, my face turned toward her. She, also silent, her sweet face resting on her upturned palm, sat facing
me, and as her eyes looked into mine I knew that neither she nor I had
spoken human speech; but I knew that her soul had answered mine, and I
drew myself up feeling youth and joyous love coursing through every vein. She, with a bright colour in her lovely face, seemed as one awakened from
a dream, and her eyes sought mine with a questioning glance which made me
tremble with delight. We broke our fast, speaking of ourselves. I told
her my name and she told me hers, the Demoiselle Jeanne d'Ys. She spoke of her father and mother's death, and how the nineteen of her
years had been passed in the little fortified farm alone with her nurse
Pelagie, Glemarec René the piqueur, and the four falconers, Raoul,
Gaston, Hastur, and the Sieur Piriou Louis, who had served her father. She had never been outside the moorland--never even had seen a human soul
before, except the falconers and Pelagie. She did not know how she had
heard of Kerselec; perhaps the falconers had spoken of it. She knew the
legends of Loup Garou and Jeanne la Flamme from her nurse Pelagie. She
embroidered and spun flax. Her hawks and hounds were her only
distraction. When she had met me there on the moor she had been so
frightened that she almost dropped at the sound of my voice. She had, it
was true, seen ships at sea from the cliffs, but as far as the eye could
reach the moors over which she galloped were destitute of any sign of
human life. There was a legend which old Pelagie told, how anybody once
lost in the unexplored moorland might never return, because the moors
were enchanted. She did not know whether it was true, she never had
thought about it until she met me. She did not know whether the falconers
had even been outside, or whether they could go if they would. The books
in the house which Pelagie, the nurse, had taught her to read were
hundreds of years old. All this she told me with a sweet seriousness seldom seen in any one but
children. My own name she found easy to pronounce, and insisted, because
my first name was Philip, I must have French blood in me. She did not
seem curious to learn anything about the outside world, and I thought
perhaps she considered it had forfeited her interest and respect from the
stories of her nurse. We were still sitting at the table, and she was throwing grapes to the
small field birds which came fearlessly to our very feet. I began to speak in a vague way of going, but she would not hear of it,
and before I knew it I had promised to stay a week and hunt with hawk and
hound in their company. I also obtained permission to come again from
Kerselec and visit her after my return. "Why," she said innocently, "I do not know what I should do if you never
came back;" and I, knowing that I had no right to awaken her with the
sudden shock which the avowal of my own love would bring to her, sat
silent, hardly daring to breathe. "You will come very often?" she asked. "Very often," I said. "Every day?" "Every day." "Oh," she sighed, "I am very happy. Come and see my hawks." She rose and took my hand again with a childlike innocence of possession,
and we walked through the garden and fruit trees to a grassy lawn which
was bordered by a brook. Over the lawn were scattered fifteen or twenty
stumps of trees--partially imbedded in the grass--and upon all of these
except two sat falcons. They were attached to the stumps by thongs which
were in turn fastened with steel rivets to their legs just above the
talons. A little stream of pure spring water flowed in a winding course
within easy distance of each perch. The birds set up a clamour when the girl appeared, but she went from one
to another, caressing some, taking others for an instant upon her wrist,
or stooping to adjust their jesses. "Are they not pretty?" she said. "See, here is a falcon-gentil. We call
it 'ignoble,' because it takes the quarry in direct chase. This is a blue
falcon. In falconry we call it 'noble' because it rises over the quarry,
and wheeling, drops upon it from above. This white bird is a gerfalcon
from the north. It is also 'noble!' Here is a merlin, and this tiercelet
is a falcon-heroner." I asked her how she had learned the old language of falconry. She did not
remember, but thought her father must have taught it to her when she was
very young. Then she led me away and showed me the young falcons still in the nest. "They are termed _niais_ in falconry," she explained. "A
_branchier_ is the young bird which is just able to leave the nest
and hop from branch to branch. A young bird which has not yet moulted is
called a _sors_, and a _mué_ is a hawk which has moulted in
captivity.