thee
or not, but some while ago I beheld that unfortunate knight where he lay
dying in a park beside a lake of water."

Then the Lady of the Fountain pressed her handkerchief to her lips as
though to check an outcry, and after a little while she said, "Good Sir,
tell me what you know." Sir Ewaine said, "I will do so." And he said:
"You are to know that when Sir Ewaine left this court to return to the
court of King Arthur, he fell in with the Enchantress Vivien, who gave
him a ring of forgetfulness so that he disremembered all that had
happened to him at your court. Afterward there came a young damsel from
this place who put him to shame before all those who were his companions
at the court of King Arthur. This that damsel did because she thought
that Sir Ewaine was unfaithful to you. But he was not unfaithful and so
he was shamed for no good reason. Now after being thus shamed before all
the court of King Arthur in that wise, this woeful knight departed from
his friends because he could not bear to dwell in his humiliation before
them. So he left all those his friends and journeyed afar, and in his
journeyings he fell among thieves, and these finding him unarmed, bound
him whilst he slept, and robbed him and wounded him to death. So it was
that I beheld him lying by the wayside, pierced through with a javelin
and dying of that wound, and so have I come thither to tell you of this
story."

Now when the Lady of the Fountain heard what that pilgrim had to say,
she shrieked with great violence and immediately swooned away and fell
upon the ground.

Then several of her maidens ran to her and these served her until by and
by she revived from her swoon. Yet when she was thus recovered she
straightway fell to smiting her hands together and crying aloud in a
very bitter agony of spirit: "Woe is me that I should have disbelieved
in the honor of that noble and worthy knight, for now because of my
disbelief in him I perceive that I have lost him forever. For so hath
died the best and truest knight that ever lived in all of the world."
Saying this, she fell to weeping in great measure, and Elose strove to
comfort her, also weeping, but the lady would not be comforted. Then Sir
Ewaine said, "Lady, hast thou yet such a kind regard for the knight as
this?" And the Lady Lesolie said with great passion: "Yea, truly, and so
I always shall have, for methinks that never such another knight as he
lived in this world."

[Sidenote: _Sir E