‘I ask thee if thou hast brought me the token whereon thou shalt swear to give me that gift.’
‘Yea,’ said he; and therewith drew the ring from his bosom, and held it out to her. She reached out her hand to him slowly and took it, and their fingers met as she did so, and he noted that her hand was warm and firm and wholesome as he well remembered it.
She said: ‘Whence hadst thou this fair finger-ring?’
Said Face-of-god: ‘My friend there in the mountain-valley drew it from off her finger for thee, and bade me bear thee a message.’
Her face flushed red: ‘Yea,’ she said, ‘and doth she send me a message? Then doth she know of me, and ye have talked of me together. Well, give the message!’
Said Face-of-god: ‘She saith, that thou shalt bear in mind, That to-morrow is a new day.’
‘Yea,’ she said, ‘for her it is so, and for thee; but not for me. But now I have brought thee here that thou mightest swear thine oath to me; lay thine hand on this ring and on this brazen plate whereby the sun measures the hours of the day for happy folk, and swear by the spring-tide of the year and all glad things that find a mate, and by the God of the Earth that rejoiceth in the life of man.’
Then he laid his hand on the finger-ring as it lay on the dial-plate and said:
‘By the spring-tide and the live things that long to multiply their kind; by the God of the Earth that rejoiceth in the life of man, I swear to give to my kinswoman the Bride the second man-child that I beget; to be hers, to leave or cherish, to love or hate, as her will may bid her.’ Then he looked on her soberly and said: ‘It is duly sworn; is it enough?’
‘Yea,’ she said; but he saw how the tears ran out of her eyes and wetted the bosom of her kirtle, and she hung her head for shame of her grief. And Gold-mane was all abashed, and had no word to say; for he knew that no word of his might comfort her; and he deemed it ill done to stay there and behold her sorrow; and he knew not how to get him gone, and be glad elsewhere, and leave her alone.
Then, as if she had read his thought, she looked up at him and said smiling a little amidst of her tears:
‘I bid thee stay by me till the flood is over; for I have yet a word to say to thee.’
So he stood there gazing down on the grass in his turn, and not daring to raise his eyes to her face, and the minutes seemed long to him: till at last she said in a voice scarcely yet clear of weeping: