ocean-sea without wetting our bodies in its waters?"

"Let us go," she said.

So they went down on to the level sands, and along the edges of the
sweet-water stream that flowed from the Well; and Ralph said: "Beloved,
I will tell thee of that which thou hast asked me: when I was but a lad
of sixteen winters there rode men a-lifting into Upmeads, and Nicholas
Longshanks, who is a wise man of war, gathered force and went against
them, and I must needs ride beside him. Now we came to our above, and
put the thieves to the road; but in the hurly I got a claw from the
war-beast, for the stroke of a sword sheared me off somewhat from my
shoulder: belike thou hast seen the scar and loathed it."

"It is naught loathsome," she said, "for a lad to be a bold warrior,
nor for a grown man to think lightly of the memory of death drawn near
for the first time. Yea, I have noted it but let me see now what has
befallen with it."

As she spoke they were come to a salt pool in a rocky bight on their
right hand, which the tide was filling speedily; and Ralph spake: "See
now, this is the bath of the water of the ocean sea." So they were
speedily naked and playing in the water: and Ursula took Ralph by the
arm and looked to his shoulder and said: "O my lad of the pale edges,
where is gone thy glory? There is no mark of the sword's pilgrimage on
thy shoulder." "Nay, none?" quoth he.

"None, none!" she said, "Didst thou say the very sooth of thy hurt in
the battle, O poor lad of mine?" "Yea, the sooth," said he. Then she
laughed sweetly and merrily like the chuckle of a flute over the
rippling waters, that rose higher and higher about them, and she turned
her eyes askance and looked adown to her own sleek side, and laid her
hand on it and laughed again. Then said Ralph: "What is toward,
beloved? For thy laugh is rather of joy that of mirth alone."

She said: "O smooth-skinned warrior, O Lily and Rose of battle; here
on my side yesterday was the token of the hart's tyne that gored me
when I was a young maiden five years ago: look now and pity the maiden
that lay on the grass of the forest, and the woodman a-passing by
deemed her dead five years ago."

Ralph stooped down as the ripple washed away from her, then said: "In
sooth here is no mark nor blemish, but the best handiwork of God, as
when he first made a woman from the side of the Ancient Father of the
field of Damask. But lo you love, how swift the tide cometh up, and I
l