t thanks
wilt thou have for this? Wherefore hast thou done it?' And I said, 'It
is because of the gladness I have gotten.' Said she, 'And would that I
might get gladness!' So I asked her what was amiss now that she was
free. She said: 'I have lost one thing that I loved, and found another
and lost it also.' So I said: 'Mightest thou not seek for the lost?'
She said, 'It is in this wood, but when I shall find it I shall not
have it.' 'It is love that thou art seeking,' said I. 'In what
semblance is he?'

"What wilt thou, my friend? Straightway she fell to making a picture
of thee in words; so that I knew that she had met thee, and belike
after I had departed from thee, and my heart was sore thereat; for now
I will tell thee the very truth, that she was a young woman and
exceeding fair, as if she were of pearl all over, and as sweet as
eglantine; and I feared her lest she should meet thee again in these
wildwoods. And so I asked her what would she, and she said that she
had a mind to seek to the Well 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