a little while he
said:

'It is this, my lord. I bear a request from my uncle, King Mark, and it
is that you give him your daughter La Belle Isoude for his wife, and ye
let me take her unto him, for so I have promised him.'

'Alas,' said the king, and looked full heavily into the eyes of Sir
Tristram, 'I had liefer than all the land that I have that ye should
wed her yourself.'

Sir Tristram turned away, and made this reply:

'I have given my promise, and I were ashamed for ever in the world if I
did aught else. I require you to hold to your promise, and to let your
daughter depart with me to be wedded to my uncle, King Mark.'

'As I have promised, so will I do,' said the king. 'But I let you know
'tis with a heavy heart.'

Nor would the king say more, knowing that he might make bad worse. But
the surprise and grief of La Belle Isoude, when she knew that Sir
Tristram was to take her to be wife not unto himself but to a stranger,
what tongue may tell and what words may say? Nightly, on the days when
she was being prepared to depart, she wept full sorely in the arms of
her mother or of Bragwine her faithful gentlewoman; but in hall or
abroad she was ever calm and cold, though pale.

The queen, her mother, feared much of this marriage, and so sent a
swift message to a great witch who dwelled in a dark wet valley in the
midst of the Purple Hills, and for much gold a potent philtre was
prepared. Then, on the day when, with much weeping and many sad
farewells, La Belle Isoude with her gentlewomen and many noble ladies
and knights were to go into the ship, the queen called Bragwine aside,
and giving her a little golden flasket, said to her:

'Take this with thee, Bragwine, for I misdoubt this marriage overmuch,
and I charge thee do this. On the day that King Mark shall wed my
daughter, do thou mix this drink in their wine in equal parts, and then
I undertake that each shall love the other alone all the days of their
lives.'

Anon Sir Tristram and La Belle Isoude took ship and got to sea. During
the voyage Sir Tristram kept himself much with the other knights and
rarely sat with Isoude; for in his heart was much grief, and he hated
the fair wind that drove the ship more quickly to the time when he must
give up La Belle Isoude to his uncle. He knew now that he loved none
other woman in the world but her, and never would so long as he should
live.

Bragwine the maid, seeing the pensive looks of her mistress, and
kn