But Ralph leapt up, and half drew his sword, and cried out loud:  “Would God I had slain him!  Wherefore could I not slay him?” And he strode up and down the sward before her in his wrath.  But she leaned forward to him and laughed and said:  “Yet, O Champion, we will not go back to him, for he is stronger than thou, and hath vanquished thee.  This is a desert place, but thou art loud, and maybe over loud.  Come rest by me.”

So he came and sat down by her, and took her hand again and kissed the wrist thereof and fondled it and said:  “Yea, but he desireth thee sorely; that was easy to see.  It was my ill-luck that I slew him not.”

She stroked his face again and said:  “Long were the tale if I told thee all.  After he had driven me out, and I had fled from him, he fell in with me again divers times, as was like to be; for his brother is the Captain of the Dry Tree; the tall man whom thou hast seen with me:  and every time this baron hath come on me he has prayed my love, as one who would die despaired if I granted it not, but O my love with the bright sword” (and she kissed his cheek therewith, and fondled his hand with both her hands), “each time I said him nay, I said him nay.”  And again her face burned with blushes.

“And his brother,” said Ralph, “the big captain that I have come across these four times, doth he desire thee also?” She laughed and said:  “But as others have, no more:  he will not slay any man for my sake.”

Said Ralph:  “Didst thou wot that I was abiding thy coming at the Castle of Abundance?” “Yea,” she said, “have I not told thee that I bade Roger lead thee thither?” Then she said softly:  “That was after that first time we met; after I had ridden away on the horse of that butcher whom thou slayedst.”

“But why camest thou so late?” said he; “Wouldst thou have come if I had abided there yet?” She said:  “What else did I desire but to be with thee?  But I set out alone looking not for any peril, since our riders had gone to the north against them of the Burg:  but as I drew near to the Water of the Oak, I fell in with my husband and that other man; and this time all my naysays were of no avail, and whatsoever I might say he constrained me to go with them; but straightway they fell out together, and fought, even as thou sawest.”  And she looked at him sweetly, and as frankly as if he had been naught but her dearest brother.

But he said:  “It was concerning thee that they fought:  hast thou known the Black Knight for long?”

“Yea,” she said, “I may not hide that he hath loved me:  but he hath also betrayed me.  It was through him that the Knight of the Sun drave me from him.  Hearken, for this concerneth thee:  he made a tale of me of true and false mingled, that I was a wise-wife and an enchantress, and my lord trowed in him, so that I was put to shame before all the house, and driven forth wrung with anguish, barefoot and bleeding.”