'
Then suddenly and passionately she spoke:
'I have gone mad. I love you: let me die.'
'Ah, sister,' answer'd Lancelot, 'what is this?'
And innocently extending her white arms,
'Your love,' she said, 'your love--to be your wife.'
And Lancelot answer'd, 'Had I chosen to wed,
I had been wedded earlier, sweet Elaine:
But now there never will be wife of mine.'
'No, no' she cried, 'I care not to be wife,
But to be with you still, to see your face,
To serve you, and to follow you thro' the world.'
And Lancelot answer'd, 'Nay, the world, the world,
All ear and eye, with such a stupid heart
To interpret ear and eye, and such a tongue
To blare its own interpretation--nay,
Full ill then should I quit your brother's love,
And your good father's kindness.' And she said,
'Not to be with you, not to see your face -
Alas for me then, my good days are done.'"
So she dies, and is borne down Thames to London, the fairest corpse,
"and she lay as though she had smiled." Her letter is read. "Ye
might have showed her," said the Queen, "some courtesy and gentleness
that might have preserved her life;" and so the two are reconciled.
Such, in brief, is the tender old tale of true love, with the shining
courtesy of Lavaine and the father of the maid, who speak no word of
anger against Lancelot. "For since first I saw my lord, Sir
Lancelot," says Lavaine, "I could never depart from him, nor nought I
will, if I may follow him: she doth as I do.
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