But now when thine own mouth telleth me of one of them it irks
me little. Dost thou think it little-hearted in me?"
"O friend," she said, "I see that so it is with thee that thou wouldst
find due cause for loving me, whatever thou foundest true of me.
Or dost thou deem that I was another woman in those days? Nay, I was not:
I can see myself still myself all along the way I have gone."
She was silent a little, and then she said: "Fear not, I will give
thee much cause to love me. But now I know thy mind the better,
I shall tell thee less of what befell me after I left the wilderness;
for whatever I did and whatever I endured, still it was always I myself
that was there, and it is me that thou lovest. Moreover, my life
in the wilderness is a stranger thing to tell thee of than my
dealings with the folk, and with Kings and Barons and Knights.
But thereafter thou shalt hear of me what tales thou wilt of these matters,
as the days and the years pass over our heads.
"Now on the morrow we would not depart at once, because there we
had some victual, and the king's son was not yet so well fed as
he should be; so we abode in that fair place another day, and then
we went our ways westward, according to the rede of the carline;
and it was many days before we gat us out of the wilderness,
and we were often hard put to it for victual; whiles I sat behind
my knight a-horseback, whiles he led the beast while I rode alone,
and not seldom I went afoot, and that nowise slowly, while he rode
the white horse, for I was as light-foot then as now.
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