Among those who came to look at him and to listen to him was the
daughter of a little king who lived a great way off; and when he saw
her he loved, for she was beautiful, with a strange and pale beauty
unlike the women of his land; but Dana, the great mother, had decreed
her a heart that was but as the heart of others, and when she
considered the mystery of the hawk feathers she was troubled with a
great horror. He called her to him when the assembly was over and
told her of her beauty, and praised her simply and frankly as though
she were a fable of the bards; and he asked her humbly to give him
her love, for he was only subtle in his dreams. Overwhelmed with his
greatness, she half consented, and yet half refused, for she longed
to marry some warrior who could carry her over a mountain in his
arms. Day by day the king gave her gifts; cups with ears of gold and
findrinny wrought by the craftsmen of distant lands; cloth from over
sea, which, though woven with curious figures, seemed to her less
beautiful than the bright cloth of her own country; and still she was
ever between a smile and a frown; between yielding and withholding.
He laid down his wisdom at her feet, and told how the heroes when
they die return to the world and begin their labour anew; how the
kind and mirthful Men of Dea drove out the huge and gloomy and
misshapen People from Under the Sea; and a multitude of things that
even the Sidhe have forgotten, either because they happened so long
ago or because they have not time to think of them; and still she
half refused, and still he hoped, because he could not believe that a
beauty so much like wisdom could hide a common heart.
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