fe, he was to me little less than the
whole of my life.
"It is as if it had befallen yesterday, my friend, that I call to mind
how we stood beside our horses in the midst of the ring of great men
clad in gold and gleaming with steel, in the meadow without the gates,
the peace and lowly goodliness whereof with its flocks and herds
feeding, and husbandmen tending the earth and its increase, that great
and noble array had changed so utterly. There we stood, and I knew
that the eyes of all those lords and warriors were set upon me
wondering. But the love of my lord and the late-learned knowledge of
my beauty sustained me. Then the ring of men opened, and the king came
forth towards us; a tall man and big, of fifty-five winters, goodly of
body and like to my lord to look upon. He cast his arms about my lord,
and kissed him and embraced him, and then stood a little aloof from him
and said: 'Well, son, hast thou found it, the Well at the World's End?'
"'Yea,' said my lord, and therewith lifted my hand to his lips and
kissed it, and I looked the king in his face, and his eyes were turned
to me, but it was as if he were looking through me at something behind
me.
"Then he said: 'It is good, son: come home now to thy mother and thy
kindred.' Then my lord turned to me while the king took no heed, and
no man in the ring of knights moved from his place, and he set me in
the saddle, and turned about to mount, and there came a lord from the
ring of men gloriously bedight, and he bowed lowly before my lord, and
held his stirrup for him: but lightly he leapt up into the saddle, and
took my reins and led me along with him, so that he and the king and I
went on together, and all the baronage and their folk shouted and
tossed sword and spear aloft and followed after us. And we left the
meadow quiet and simple again, and rode through the gate of the king's
chief city, wherein was his high house and his castle, the
dwelling-place of his kindred from of old."
CHAPTER 7
The Lady Tells of the Strife and Trouble That Befell After Her Coming
to the Country of the King's Son
"When we came to the King's House, my lord followed his father into the
hall, where sat his mother amongst her damsels: she was a fair woman,
and looked rather meek than high-hearted; my lord led me up to her, and
she embraced and kissed him and caressed him long; then she turned
about to me and would have spoken to me, but the king, who stood behind
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