After a while Etain bethought her and said, “Let us go to see how it fares with Ailill.”  So she went to where he lay in his Dun at Tethba.  And seeing him wasted and pale she was moved with pity and distress and said,

“What ails thee, young man?  Long thou hast lain prostrate, in fair weather and in foul, thou who wert wont to be so swift and strong?”

And Ailill said,

“Truly, I have a cause for my suffering; and I cannot eat, nor listen to the music makers; my affliction is very sore.”

Then said Etain,

“Though I am a woman I am wise in many a thing; tell me what ails thee and thy healing shall be done.”

Ailill replied,

“Blessing be with thee, O fair one; I am not worthy of thy speech; I am torn by the contention of body and of soul.”

Then Etain deemed that she knew somewhat of his trouble, and she said,

“If thy heart is set on any of the white maidens that are my handmaids, tell me of it, and I shall court her for thee and she shall come to thee,” and then Ailill cried out,

“Love indeed, O Queen, hath brought me low.  It is a plague nearer than the skin, it overwhelms my soul as an earthquake, it is farther than the height of the sky, and harder to win than the treasures of the Fairy Folk.  If I contend with it, it is like a combat with a spectre; if I fly to the ends of the earth from it, it is there; if I seek to seize it, it is a passion for an echo.  It is thou, O my love, who hast brought me to this, and thou alone canst heal me, or I shall never rise again.”

Then Etain went away and left him.  But still in her palace in Tara she was haunted by his passion and his misery, and, though she loved him not, she could not endure his pain, nor the triumph of grim death over his youth and beauty.  So at last she went to him again and said, “If it lies with me, Ailill, to heal thee of thy sickness, I may not let thee die.”  And she made a tryst to meet him on the morrow at a house of Ailill’s between Dun Tethba and Tara, “but be it not at Tara,” she said, “for that is the palace of the High King.”

All that night Ailill lay awake with the thought of his tryst with Etain.  But on the morrow morn a heaviness came upon his eyelids, and a druid sleep overcame him, and there all day he lay buried in slumbers from which none could wake him, until the time of his meeting with Etain was overpast.

But Etain, when she had come to the place of the tryst, looked out, and behold, a youth having the appearance and the garb of Ailill was approaching from Tethba.  He entered the bower where she was; but no lover did she there meet, but only a sick and sorrowful man who spake coldly to her and lamented the sufferings of his malady, and after a short time he went away.