at the World’s End, which quencheth all sorrow; and I rejoiced thereat, thinking that she would be far away from thee, not thinking that thou and I must even meet to seek to it also.  So I gave her the chaplet which my witch-mistress took from the dead woman’s neck; and went with her into the wildwood, and taught her wisdom of the way and what she was to do.  And again I say to thee that she was so sweet and yet with a kind of pity in her both of soul and body, and wise withal and quiet, that I feared her, though I loved her; yea and still do:  for I deem her better than me, and meeter for thee and thy love than I be.—­Dost thou know her?”

“Yea,” said Ralph, “and fair and lovely she is in sooth.  Yet hast thou naught to do to fear her.  And true it is that I saw her and spake with her after thou hadst ridden away.  For she came by the want-ways of the Wood Perilous in the dawn of the day after I had delivered thee; and in sooth she told me that she looked either for Death, or the Water of the Well to end her sorrow.”

Then he smiled and said; “As for that which thou sayest, that she had been meeter for me than thou, I know not this word.  For look you, beloved, she came, and passed, and is gone, but thou art there and shalt endure.”

She stayed, and turned and faced him at that word; and love so consumed her, that all sportive words failed her; yea and it was as if mirth and light-heartedness were swallowed up in the fire of her love; and all thought of other folk departed from him as he felt her tears of love and joy upon his face, and she kissed and embraced him there in the wilderness.

CHAPTER 10

Of the Desert-House and the Chamber of Love in the Wilderness

Then in a while they grew sober and went on their ways, and the sun was westering behind them, and casting long shadows.  And in a little while they were come out of the thick woods and were in a country of steep little valleys, grassy, besprinkled with trees and bushes, with hills of sandstone going up from them, which were often broken into cliffs rising sheer from the tree-beset bottoms:  and they saw plenteous deer both great and small, and the wild things seemed to fear them but little.  To Ralph it seemed an exceeding fair land, and he was as joyous as it was fair; but the Lady was pensive, and at last she said:  “Thou deemest it fair, and so it is; yet is it the lonesomest of deserts.  I deem indeed that it was once one of the fairest of lands, with castles and cots and homesteads all about, and fair people no few, busy with many matters amongst them.  But now it is all passed away, and there is no token of a dwelling of man, save it might be that those mounds we see, as yonder, and yonder again, are tofts of house-walls long ago sunken into the earth of the valley.  And now few even are the hunters or way-farers that wend through it.”