"Well, my friend, after we had lived thus a long time,
we set out one day to seek to the Well at the World's End,
each of us signed and marked out for the quest by bearing
such-like beads as thou and I both bear upon our necks today.
Once again of all that befell us on that quest I will tell thee
naught as now: because to that Well have I to bring thee:
though myself, belike, I need not its waters again."

Quoth Ralph: "And must thou lead me thy very self, mayest thou
not abide in some safe place my going and returning?
So many and sore as the toils and perils of the way may be."
"What!" she said, "and how shall I be sundered from thee now I
have found thee? Yea, and who shall lead thee, thou lovely boy?
Shall it be a man to bewray thee, or a woman to bewray me?
Yet need we not go tomorrow, my beloved, nor for many days:
so sweet as we are to each other.

"But in those past days it was needs must we begin our
quest before the burden of years was over heavy upon us.
Shortly to say it, we found the Well, and drank of its waters
after abundant toil and peril, as thou mayst well deem.
Then the life and the soul came back to us, and the past
years were as naught to us, and my youth was renewed in me,
and I became as thou seest me to-day. But my fellow was as a
woman of forty summers again, strong and fair as I had seen
her when she came into the garden in the days of my Queenhood,
and thus we returned to the House of the Sorceress, and rested
there for a little from our travel and our joy.

"At last, and that was but some five years ago, the Teacher said to me: