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"I would not make her love me."

"But you are a man of family and substance. You should marry. Why do you not fall in love?"

"'Tis because I've fallen in love that I cannot marry."

"Kit . . ."

The ribbons of the lute poured over his arm, and her hand crept under them, the fingers digging and kneading into his flesh, while her hand and her whole arm shook and burned as if with fire. For a moment the music wavered, then slipped without pause into a gayer, louder tune, a hay-de-guy that made the strings thrum and shake and woke great rumbling echoes in the belly of the lute.

§ V

Upstairs in her bedroom Catherine could hear the music. Her room was not directly over the privée, but a little to one side of it, though near, looking northward over the River Tillingham to where a steep hillside lay black against the stars. If she leaned out of the window she could see the spread waters of the eastern valley, the tidal lake that stretched between Pesenmarsh and Odinmere. But to-night she did not lean out, choosing to sit at her window and watch the stars.