"May it be so!" she said: "and now my tale is wearing thin
for the present time.

"Back again went my feet over the ways they had trodden before,
though the Teacher shortened the road much for us by her wisdom.
Once again what need to tell thee of these ways when thine
own eyes shall behold them as thou wendest them beside me?
Be it enough to say that once again I came to that little house
in the uttermost wilderness, and there once more was the garth
and the goat-house, and the trees of the forest beyond it,
and the wood-lawns and the streams and all the places and things
that erst I deemed I must dwell amongst for ever."

Said Ralph: "And did the carline keep troth with thee?
Was she not but luring thee thither to be her thrall?
Or did the book that I read in the Castle of Abundance but
lie concerning thee?"

"She held her troth to me in all wise," said the Lady, "and I was no
thrall of hers, but as a sister, or it may be even as a daughter;
for ever to my eyes was she the old carline who learned me lore
in the Dale of the wildwood.

"But now a long while, years long, we abode in that House of the
Sorceress ere we durst seek further to the Well at the World's End.
And yet meseems though the years wore, they wore me no older;
nay, in the first days at least I waxed stronger of body and fairer than I
had been in the King's Palace in the Land of the Tower, as though some
foretaste of the Well was there for us in the loneliness of the desert;
although forsooth the abiding there amidst the scantiness of livelihood,