a great
despair: "What care I for all this? I care only that I shall have my little
child again! Give him to me!"

[Sidenote: The Lady of the Lake taketh Launcelot into the Lake] Therewith
she would have laid hold of the garments of the Lady of the Lake in
supplication, but the Lady of the Lake drew herself away from Queen Helen's
hand and said: "Touch me not, for I am not mortal, but Fay." And thereupon
she and Launcelot vanished from before Queen Helen's eyes as the breath
vanishes from the face of a mirror.

For when you breathe upon a mirror the breath will obscure that which lieth
behind; but presently the breath will disappear and vanish, and then you
shall behold all things entirely clear and bright to the sight again. So
the Lady of the Lake vanished away, and everything behind her where she had
stood was clear and bright, and she was gone.

Then Queen Helen fell down in a swoon, and lay beside the lake of the
meadow like one that is dead; and when Foliot came he found her so and wist
not what to do for her. There was his lord who was dead and his lady who
was so like to death that he knew not whether she was dead or no. So he
knew not what to do but sat down and made great lamentation for a long
while.

[Sidenote: The Lady Helen taketh to a Nunnery] What time he sat thus there
came that way three nuns who dwelt in an abbey of nuns which was not a
great distance away from that place. These made great pity over that
sorrowful sight, and they took away from there the dead King and the woeful
Queen, and the King they buried in holy ground, and the Queen they let live
with them and she was thereafter known as the "Sister of Sorrows."

[Sidenote: How Launcelot dwelt in the lake] Now Launcelot dwelt for nigh
seventeen years with the Lady Nymue of the Lake in that wonderful,
beautiful valley covered over with the appearance of such a magical lake as
hath been aforetime described in the Book of King Arthur.

And that land of the lake was of this sort that shall here be described:--

Unto anyone who could enter into the magic water of that lake (and there
were very few of those who were mortal who were allowed to come to those
meadows of Faery that were there concealed beneath those enchanted waters)
he would behold before him a wide and radiant field of extraordinary
beauty. And he would behold that that field was covered all over with such
a multitude of exquisite and beautiful flowers that the heart of the
beho