“Thou hast the mind,” said she, “hast thou the might?” “So I deem,” said he, smiling grimly.

She looked at him proudly and said:  “Yea, but I misdoubt me thereof.”  He still had his back to Ralph and was staring at the lady; she turned her head a little and made a sign to Ralph, just as the Knight of the Sun said:  “Thou misdoubtest thee?  Who shall help thee in the desert?”

“Look over thy left shoulder,” she said.  He turned, and saw Ralph drawing near, sword in hand, smiling, but somewhat pale.  He drew aback from the Lady and, spinning round on his heel, faced Ralph, and cried out:  “Hah!  Hast thou raised up a devil against me, thou sorceress, to take from me my grief and my lust, and my life?  Fair will the game be to fight with thy devil as I have fought with my friend!  Yet now I know not whether I shall slay him or thee.”

She spake not, but stood quietly looking on him, not unkindly, while a wind came up from the water and played with a few light locks of hair that hung down from that ruddy crown, and blew her raiment from her feet and wrapped it close round her limbs; and Ralph beheld her, and close as was the very death to him (for huge and most warrior-like was his foeman) yet longing for her melted the heart within him, and he felt the sweetness of life in his inmost soul as he had never felt it before.

Suddenly the Knight of the Sun turned about to the Lady again, and fell down on his knees before her, and clasped his hands as one praying, and said:  “Now pardon me all my words, I pray thee; and let this young man depart unhurt, whether thou madest him, or hast but led him away from country and friends and all.  Then do thou come with me, and make some semblance of loving me, and suffer me to love thee.  And then shall all be well, for in a few days we will go back to thy people, and there will I be their lord or thy servant, or my brother’s man, or what thou wilt.  O wilt thou not let the summer days be sweet?”

But she spake, holding up her head proudly and speaking in a clear ringing voice:  “I have said it, that uncompelled I will not go with thee at all.”  And therewithal she turned her face toward Ralph, as she might do on any chance-met courteous man, and he saw her smiling, but she said nought to him, and gave no token of knowing him.  Then the Knight of the Sun sprang to his feet, and shook his sword above his head and ran furiously on Ralph, who leapt nimbly on one side (else had he been slain at once) and fetched a blow at the Sun-Knight, and smote him, and brake the mails on his left shoulder, so that the blood sprang, and fell on fiercely enough, smiting to right and left as the other gave back at his first onset.  But all was for nought, for the Knight of the Sun, after his giving aback under that first stroke drew himself up stark and stiff, and pressing on through all Ralph’s strokes, though they rent his mail here and there, ran within his sword, and