hou any tidings of the woman whom thou seekest?"
"Nay, nay," said he, "and now I am minded to carry on the search
out-a-gates. I have some good friends who will go with me awhile. But
thou, Lady, hast thou heard aught?"

"Naught of the damsel," she said. "But there is something else. As
Clement told me, thou seekest the Well at the World's End, and through
Utterness and by Utterbol is a way whereby folk seek thither. Mayst
thou find it, and may it profit thee more than it did my kinsman of
old, who first raised up Goldburg in the wilderness. Whereas for him
was naught but strife and confusion, till he was slain in a quarrel,
wherein to fail was to fail, and to win the day was to win shame and
misery."

She looked on him sweetly and said: "Thou art nowise such as he; and
if thou drink of the Well, thou wilt go back to Upmeads, and thy father
and mother, and thine own folk and thine home. But now here is the
letter which thou shalt give to the Lord of Utterbol if thou meet him;
and mayhappen he is naught so evil a man as the tale of him runs."

She gave him the letter into his hands, and spake again: "And now I
have this to say to thee, if anything go amiss with thee, and thou be
nigh enough to seek to me, come hither, and then, in whatso plight thou
mayst be, or whatsoever deed thou mayst have done, here will be the
open door for thee and the welcome of a friend."

Her voice shook a little as she spake, and she was silent again,
mastering her trouble. Then she said: "At last I must say this to
thee, that there may no lie be between us. That damsel of whom thou
spakest that she was but thy friend, and not thy love--O that I might
be thy friend in such-wise! But over clearly I see that it may not be
so. For thy mind looketh on thy deeds to come, that they shall be
shared by some other than me. Friend, it seemeth strange and strange
to me that I have come on thee so suddenly, and loved thee so sorely,
and that I must needs say farewell to thee in so short a while.
Farewell, farewell!"

Therewith she arose, and once more she took his hand in hers, and led
him to the door. And he was sorry and all amazed: for he had not
thought so much of her before, that he might see that she loved him;
and he thought but that she, being happy and great, was kind to him who
was hapless and homeless. And he was bewildered by her words and sore
ashamed that for all his grief for her he had no speech, and scarce a
look for h