A Lovers' Tale by Maurice Hewlett

She hadn't seen him since the day of her first bridal, the day when Berse brought her home into Sowerby. They had parted in unkindness, and it seems that they were to meet so; for her first feeling in her discontent was of hot rage against him as the maker of it. Her eyes were angry, and her cheek-bones were angry; she sat where she was by the fire with her needlework still in her lap, and watched him, waiting for him to speak.

Cormac, also, at first said nothing to her. He stood framed in the doorway, wryly smiling, frowning with one eyebrow. He considered her as a painter considers his unfinished work, whistling in his teeth as he wonders where he shall begin. Words and phrases sang and danced in his head, as he absorbed her again. Then he said, "Stangerd, you are like a morning in April, when the sun is breaking through the rain, and thinning it into mist. If I could stand always at this distance from you, Stangerd, and look at you like this, I should make songs which would be the music of all Iceland. But I can't, and you know that I can't, keep so far from you now, after what has been between you and me; and so I am going away from you, my golden wonder, and will put the blue water between us. What do you say to that?"