“‘Great is thy Kingship, Lady,’ said the woman, and smiled withal.  Then she sat silent a little, and said:  ’When six months are worn, it will be springtide; I will come to thee in the spring days, and know what thy mind is then.  But now I must depart.’  Quoth I:  ’Glad shall I be to talk with thee again; for though thou hast learned me much of wisdom, yet much more I need; yea, as much as the folk here deem I have already.’  ‘Thou shalt have no less,’ said the woman.  Then she kissed my hands and went her ways, and I sat musing still for a long while:  because for all my gains, and my love that I had been loved withal, and the greatness that I had gotten, there was as it were a veil of unhappiness wrapped round about my heart.

“So wore the months, and ere the winter had come befell an evil thing, for my lord, who had loved me so, and taken me out of the wilderness, died, and was gathered to the fathers, and there was I left alone; for there was no fruit of my womb by him alive.  My first-born had been slain by those wretches, and a second son that I bore had died of a pestilence that war and famine had brought upon the land.  I will not wear thy soul with words about my grief and sorrow:  but it is to be told that I sat now in a perilous place, and yet I might not step down from it and abide in that land, for then it was a sure thing, that some of my foes would have laid hand on me and brought me to judgment for being but myself, and I should have ended miserably.  So I gat to me all the strength that I might, and whereas there were many who loved me still, some for my own sake, and some for the sake of my lord that was, I endured in good hope that all my days were not done.  Yet I longed for the coming of the Teacher of Lore; for now I made up my mind that I would go with her, and seek to the Well at the World’s End for weal and woe.

“She came while April was yet young:  and I need make no long tale of how we gat us away:  for whereas she was wise in hidden lore, it was no hard matter for her to give me another semblance than mine own, so that I might have walked about the streets of our city from end to end, and none had known me.  So I vanished away from my throne and my kingdom, and that name and fame of a witch-wife clove to me once and for all, and spread wide about the cities of folk and the kingdoms, and many are the tales that have arisen concerning me, and belike some of these thou hast heard told.”

Ralph reddened and said:  “My soul has been vexed by some inkling of them; but now it is at rest from them for ever.”

“May it be so!” she said:  “and now my tale is wearing thin for the present time.

“Back again went my feet over the ways they had trodden before, though the Teacher shortened the road much for us by her wisdom.  Once again what need to tell thee of these ways when thine own eyes shall behold them as thou wendest them beside me?  Be it enough to say that once again I came to that little house in the uttermost wilderness, and there once more was the garth and the goat-house, and the trees of the forest beyond it, and the wood-lawns and the streams and all the places and things that erst I deemed I must dwell amongst for ever.”