.

"Yes," she answered; "I have worked while you slumbered."

Then a table was set within the pavilion, and covered with a rich array
of meats and drinks, of which Percivale ate with great appetite, while
the lady sat opposite him with a very gracious aspect. The wine he drank
was the strongest that had ever passed his lips, and its strength soon
got into his veins and heated his brain.

The lady now smiled graciously upon him, and it seemed to him that he
had never beheld so fair a creature. Her beauty so worked upon his
heated blood, indeed, that he proffered her his love, and prayed
earnestly for hers in return.

When she saw his loving ardor, and that the wine worked like fire in his
blood, she said, with a smile of witchery,--

"Sir Percivale, if I become yours, you must become mine. I shall not
grant you my love unless you swear that henceforth you will be my true
servant, and do nothing but what I shall command. Will you thus bind
yourself, as you are a true knight?"

"That will I, fair lady, by the faith of my body."

"Then this I will say, that of all the knights in the world you are he
whom I most love. And you may seal upon my lips the compact we have
made."

But when Percivale came towards her, to claim the proffered kiss, which
she offered with such bewitching grace, by chance or through God's aid
he saw his sword, which lay on the ground at his feet, and in its pommel
a red cross, with the sign of the crucifix therein. Then came to his
mind the promise he had made to the old man, and his knightly vows, and
with a pious impulse he raised his hand and made the sign of the cross
on his forehead, the while his eyes were fixed on the lovely face of the
tempter before him.

As he did so her smile changed to a look of deadly hate, and the
loveliness of her face to a hideous aspect, while in the same moment the
pavilion fell as before a great wind, and then vanished in smoke and
cloud.

Over the sea the wind rose and roared, and as he looked he saw the ship
battling with heaving waves, while the water seemed to burn behind it.
On the deck stood the lady, who cried,--

"Sir Percivale, you have betrayed me! Beware, proud knight, I shall have
my revenge." Then the ship drove out to sea, and vanished from his
sight.

But in a passion of remorse Percivale snatched up the sword that lay
before him, and crying, "Since my flesh has been my master I will punish
it," he drove the naked blade through his thig