"Then there came to me an inkling of the things that should befall,
and I saw that the sweet and clean happiness of my new days was marred,
and had grown into something else, and I began to know the pain of strife
and the grief of confusion: but whereas I had not been bred delicately,
but had endured woes and griefs from my youngest days, I was not abashed,
but hardened my heart to face all things, even as my lord strove to harden
his heart: for, indeed, I said to myself that if I was to him as the half
of his life, he was to me little less than the whole of my life.
"It is as if it had befallen yesterday, my friend, that I call to mind
how we stood beside our horses in the midst of the ring of great men
clad in gold and gleaming with steel, in the meadow without the gates,
the peace and lowly goodliness whereof with its flocks and herds feeding,
and husbandmen tending the earth and its increase, that great and noble
array had changed so utterly. There we stood, and I knew that the eyes
of all those lords and warriors were set upon me wondering. But the love
of my lord and the late-learned knowledge of my beauty sustained me.
Then the ring of men opened, and the king came forth towards us;
a tall man and big, of fifty-five winters, goodly of body and like to
my lord to look upon. He cast his arms about my lord, and kissed him
and embraced him, and then stood a little aloof from him and said:
'Well, son, hast thou found it, the Well at the World's End?'
"'Yea,' said my lord, and therewith lifted my hand to his lips and kissed it,
and I looked the king in his face, and his eyes were turned to me, but it
was as if he were looking through me at something behind me.
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