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."

Quoth Ralph: "Thou speakest as if there had been once histories and
tales of this pleasant wilderness: tell me, has it anything to do with
that land about the wide river which we went through, Roger and I, as
we rode to the Castle of Abundance the other day? For he spoke of
tales of deeds and mishaps concerning it." "Yea," she said, "so it is,
and the little stream that runs yonder beneath those cliffs, is making
its way towards that big river aforesaid, which is called the Swelling
Flood. Now true it is also that there are many tales about of the wars
and miseries that turned this land into a desert, and these may be true
enough, and belike are true. But these said tales have become blended
with the story of those aforesaid wars of the Land of the Tower; of
which indeed this desert is verily a part, but was desert still in the
days when I was Queen of the Land; so thou mayst well think that they
who hold me to be the cause of all this loneliness (and belike Roger
thought it was so) have scarce got hold of the very s