mayest thou not
abide in some safe place my going and returning? So many and sore as
the toils and perils of the way may be." "What!" she said, "and how
shall I be sundered from thee now I have found thee? Yea, and who
shall lead thee, thou lovely boy? Shall it be a man to bewray thee, or
a woman to bewray me? Yet need we not go tomorrow, my beloved, nor for
many days: so sweet as we are to each other.

"But in those past days it was needs must we begin our quest before the
burden of years was over heavy upon us. Shortly to say it, we found
the Well, and drank of its waters after abundant toil and peril, as
thou mayst well deem. Then the life and the soul came back to us, and
the past years were as naught to us, and my youth was renewed in me,
and I became as thou seest me to-day. But my fellow was as a woman of
forty summers again, strong and fair as I had seen her when she came
into the garden in the days of my Queenhood, and thus we returned to
the House of the Sorceress, and rested there for a little from our
travel and our joy.

"At last, and that was but some five years ago, the Teacher said to me:
'Sister, I have learned thee all that thine heart can take of me, and
thou art strong in wisdom, and moreover again shall it be with thee, as
I told of thee long ago, that no man shall look on thee that shall not
love thee. Now I will not seek to see thy life that is coming, nor
what thine end shall be, for that should belike be grievous to both of
us; but this I see of thee, that thou wilt now guide thy life not as I
will, but as thou wilt; and since my way is not thy way, and that I see
thou shalt not long abide alone, now shall we sunder; for I am minded
to go to the most ancient parts of the world, and seek all the
innermost of wisdom whiles I yet live; but with kings and champions and
the cities of folk will I have no more to do: while thou shalt not be
able to refrain from these. So now I bid thee farewell.'

"I wept at her words, but gainsaid them naught, for I wotted that she
spake but the truth; so I kissed her, and we parted; she went her ways
through the wildwood, and I abode at the House of the Sorceress, and
waited on the wearing of the days.

"But scarce a month after her departure, as I stood by the threshold
one morning amidst of the goats, I saw men come riding from out the
wood; so I abode them, and they came to the gate of the garth and there
lighted down from their horses, and they were t