rom where he sat in the boat at the feet of the dead
lady, and so beheld Sir Launcelot where he stood. Then upon the instant
Sir Lavaine stood up in the barge and he cried out in a great loud harsh
voice: "Hah! art thou there, thou traitor knight? Behold the work that
thou hast done; for this that thou beholdest is thy handiwork. Thou hast
betrayed this lady's love for the love of another, and so thou hast
brought her to her death!"

So said Sir Lavaine before all those who were there, but it was as
though Sir Launcelot heard him not, for ever he stood as though he were
a dead man and not a living man of flesh and blood. Then of a sudden he
awoke, as it were, to life, and he clasped the back of his hands across
his eyes, and cried out in a voice as though that voice tore his heart
asunder, "Remorse! Remorse! Remorse!" saying those words three times
over in that wise.

Then he shut his lips tight as though to say no more, and thereupon
turned and went away from that place.

[Sidenote: _Sir Launcelot departeth._]

And he turned neither to this side nor to that, but went straight to the
castle of the King, and there ordered that his horse should be brought
forth to him upon the instant. So when his horse was brought he mounted
it and rode away; and he bade farewell to no one, and no one was there
when he thus departed.

So for a long while Sir Launcelot rode he knew not whither, but after a
while he found himself in the forest not far away from the cell of the
hermit of the forest. And he beheld the hermit of the forest, that he
stood in an open plat of grass in front of his cell and that he was
feeding the wild birds of the woodland; for the little feathered
creatures were gathered in great multitudes about him, some resting upon
his head and some upon his shoulders and some upon his hands. And a wild
doe and a fawn of the forest browsed near by and all was full of peace
and good content.

But at the coming of Sir Launcelot, all those wild creatures took alarm;
the birds they flew chirping away, and the doe and the fawn they fled
away into the thickets of the forest. For they wist, by some instinct,
that a man of sin and sorrow was coming thitherward; wherefore they were
afeared and fled away in that wise.

But Sir Launcelot thought nothing of this, but leaped from his horse,
and ran to the hermit and flung himself down upon the ground before him
and embraced him about the feet. And the hermit was greatly astonish