one is a strange creature, who should scare thee or scathe thee with a good will, but of a good will shall serve nought save me; the other is a woman, a thrall, of little avail, save that, being compelled, she will work woman’s service for me, but whom none else shall compel. … Yea, but what is all this to thee; or to me that I should tell it to thee? I will not drive thee away; but if thine entertainment please thee not, make no plaint thereof to me, but depart at thy will. Now is this talk betwixt us overlong, since, as thou seest, I and this King’s Son are in converse together. Art thou a King’s Son?
Nay, Lady, said Walter, I am but of the sons of the merchants.
It matters not, she said; go thy ways into one of the chambers.
And straightway she fell a-talking to the man who sat beside her concerning the singing of the birds beneath her window in the morning; and of how she had bathed her that day in a pool of the woodlands, when she had been heated with hunting, and so forth; and all as if there had been none there save her and the King’s Son.
But Walter departed all ashamed, as though he had been a poor man thrust away from a
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