"And never a harsh word for anyone, they say--!" "Oh, but she is the most admirable of ladies--!" "And so brave too, that lovely smiling child who is leaving her home forever!" "And so very, very pretty!" "--So generous!" "King Arthur will be hard put to it to deserve her!" Said Jurgen: "Now it is droll that to these truths I have but to add another truth in order to have large paving-stones flung at her! and to have myself tumultuously torn into fragments, by those unpleasantly sweaty persons who, thank Heaven, are no longer jostling me!" For the Cathedral porch had suddenly emptied, because as the procession passed heralds were scattering silver among the spectators. "Arthur will have a very lovely queen," says a soft lazy voice. And Jurgen turned and saw that beside him was Dame Anaïtis, whom people called the Lady of the Lake. "Yes, he is greatly to be envied," says Jurgen, politely. "But do you not ride with them to London?" "Why, no," says the Lady of the Lake, "because my part in this bridal was done when I mixed the stirrup-cup of which the Princess and young Lancelot drank this morning. He is the son of King Ban of Benwick, that tall young fellow in blue armor. I am partial to Lancelot, for I reared him, at the bottom of a lake that belongs to me, and I consider he does me credit. I also believe that Madame Guenevere by this time agrees with me. And so, my part being done to serve my creator, I am off for Cocaigne." "And what is this Cocaigne?" "It is an island wherein I rule." "I did not know you were a queen, madame." "Why, indeed there are a many things unknown to you, Messire de Logreus, in a world where nobody gets any assuredness of knowledge about anything. For it is a world wherein all men that live have but a little while to live, and none knows his fate thereafter. So that a man possesses nothing certainly save a brief loan of his own body: and yet the body of man is capable of much curious pleasure." "I believe," said Jurgen, as his thoughts shuddered away from what he had seen and heard in the Druid forest, "that you speak wisdom." "Then in Cocaigne we are all wise: for that is our religion. But of what are you thinking, Duke of Logreus?" "I was thinking," says Jurgen, "that your eyes are unlike the eyes of any other woman that I have ever seen." Smilingly the dark woman asked him wherein they differed, and smilingly he said he did not know. They were looking at each other warily. In each glance an experienced gamester acknowledged a worthy opponent. "Why, then you must come with me into Cocaigne," says Anaïtis, "and see if you cannot discover wherein lies that difference. For it is not a matter I would care to leave unsettled." "Well, that seems only just to you," says Jurgen. "Yes, certainly I must deal fairly with you."