render the keeping of my heart?
What do I ask that is so hard to find?_

_"Am I seeking for a god? Nay, surely not, but only for a man. Valorous he
must be, indeed, but not in the lists--'tis not a soldier, for I have seen
them by the hundred since I left my home in the valley. 'Tis not a model
for the tapestry weaver that my heart would have, for I have seen the most
beautiful youths of my country since I came forth upon my quest._

_"Some one, perchance," mused the Lady Elaine, "whose beauty my eyes alone
should perceive, whose valour only I should guess before there was need to
test it. Some one great of heart and clean of mind, in whose eyes there
should never be that which makes a woman ashamed. Some one fine-fibred and
strong-souled, not above tenderness when a maid was tired. One who should
make a shield of his love, to keep her not only from the great hurts but
from the little ones as well, and yet with whom she might fare onward,
shoulder to shoulder, as God meant mates should fare._

_"Surely 'tis not so unusual, this thing that I ask--only an honest man
with human faults and human virtues, transfigured by a great love. And why
is it that in this quest of mine, I have found him not?"_

_"Princess," said a voice at her doorway, "thou art surely still awake.
The storm is lessening and there is naught to fear. I pray thee, try to
sleep. And if there is aught I can do for thee, thou knowest thou hast
only to speak."_

_From the warm darkness where she lay, Elaine saw his face with the
firelight upon it, and all at once she knew._

_"There is naught," she answered, with what he thought was coldness. "I
bid thee leave me and take thine own rest."_

_"As thou wilt," he responded, submissively, but though the sound was now
faint and far away, she still could hear him walking back and forth,
keeping his unremitting guard._

_So it was that at last Love came to the Lady Elaine. She had dreamed of
some fair stranger, into whose eyes she should look and instantly know him
for her lord, never guessing that her lord had gone with her when she left
the Castle of Content. There was none of those leaps of the heart of which
one of the maids at the Castle had read from the books while the others
worked at the tapestry frames. It was nothing new, but only a light upon
something which had always been, and which, because of her own blindness,
she had not seen._

_All through this foolish journey, Love had ridden beside th