“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 us, scowled on her, and she forebore; but she looked me on somewhat kindly, and yet as one who is afeard.

“Thus it went for the rest of the day, and my lord had me to sit beside him in the great hall when the banquet was holden, and I ate and drank with him and beheld all the pageants by his side, and none meddled with me either to help or to hinder, because they feared the king.  Yet many eyes I saw that desired my beauty.  And so when night came, he took me to his chamber and his bed, as if I were his