“Sir, since in thy great gentleness thou givest me so high a place, I pray to God that there may never be strife between us two by any fault of mine.  Sir, I will be thy true and humble wife until I die!”

Then Arviragus took his bride home with him to his castle by the sea.  He honored Dorigen as much as he had done before his marriage, and tried to fulfil her wishes in everything.  Dorigen was just as eager to please Arviragus as he was to please her, and they were happy together in all their work and play.

Arviragus stayed quietly at home for a year, but after that he grew restless.  He felt that no true knight had a right to live on quietly at home, with nothing to do except to order his castle and to hunt.  So he sailed away to England that he might win honor and renown in the wars there.

Dorigen stood by the castle and watched his sails disappear in the north.  Poor Dorigen! her husband was gone, and she did not know if he would ever come back to her.  For weeks she wept and mourned.  At night she could not rest, and by day she would not eat.  All the things that she had cared most to do were now dull and worthless to her because Arviragus was away.

Her friends saw her sorrow, and tried to comfort her in every way they could.  When they found she would not be comforted, they spoke harshly to her, and told her that it was very wrong of her to kill herself with sorrow, when Arviragus hoped to come home again strong and famous.  Then they began to comfort her again, and to try to make her forget her sadness.

After a long time Dorigen’s sorrow began to grow quieter.  She could not have lived if she had always felt her grief as deeply as she did at first.  Indeed, as it was, this sorrow would have broken her heart, if letters had not come from Arviragus.  They brought her tidings of his doings, and of the glory he had won.  But what comforted her most was that they told her that he would soon return.

When Dorigen’s friends saw that she was less hopeless, they begged her to come and roam with them to drive away the last of her dark fears.  This she did.  Often she walked with them by the edge of the cliffs on which her castle stood.  But there she saw the white ships and the brown barges sailing, one north, another south, to the havens for which they were bound.  Then she would turn away from her friends and say to herself: 

“Alas! of all the ships I see, is there never one that will bring my lord home?  Then should I need no comfort.  My heart would be cured of this bitter smart.”

At times as she sat and thought, she leaned down and looked over the brink of the cliffs.  But, when she saw the grisly, black rocks, her very heart trembled within her.  Then she would sink down on the grass and wail: 

“O God, men say Thou hast made nothing in vain, but, Lord, why hast Thou made these black, grisly rocks?  No man nor beast is helped by them in all the world.  Rocks have destroyed a hundred thousand men, and which of all Thy works is so fair as man?  No doubt wise men will say, ‘All is for the best.’  But, oh Thou God, who makest the winds to blow, keep Thou my lord!  And—­would to God that these black rocks were sunk in the deep for his sake!  They slay my heart with fear.”