Then, turning to her people, she commanded that I and the body of dead Regner be brought to shore, which the spearmen did, supporting me, who found myself still weak, and laying the body of my comrade upon the sand. Then, without further parley, and under direction of the woman, the band returned the way whence it had come, I walking with a supporting spearman on either side. We reached the point from which the company had first appeared and there came upon a roadway leading into the forest. Upon this roadway we travelled it may be half a league when we reached a crossroad, and there we came to a halt. “Take him to where the king is sitting,” said the woman then, to those about me, “and say to King Cadwallon that I will follow swiftly, that I may make all clear to him relating to the prisoner.” Then she looked upon me fixedly, but saying nothing, as I also looked upon her most steadfastly and as I had never before looked upon the face or into the eyes of woman. There came to me a marvellous understanding. There were, among the race of Vikings, poets who made the Sagas and had gifts in the divination of what was most fair and noble and beyond all common things or hopes or fears, and from one of these had come the curious and lofty affirmation that it might happen, though most rarely in the world, that a man and woman should for the first time look upon each other and that there should come to each the vast knowledge that they two were but as one in a loving which could not be in any way withstood or denied, calling for any sacrifice. And so it was! Well I know it to be unbelievable, but, as we stood there thus, she a haughty princess of the haughty Iceni, as I came to know, and I, a Viking haughty as she, but rude and rough of port and now blood-stained and grimy, the truth of the thing so strange came out like light between us. Each knew it well and each accepted it unfalteringly, for we were made of such a mould. No loftier or more courageous was I in my degree than my fair and stately Goneril. We spoke no word, but, as we parted at the crossroad and her chariot swept away, I knew that beyond all doubting I should find her with King Cadwallon and that she would have already spoken.