But as sick folks when they are alone think company would relieve them, and yet having company do find it noisome, changing willingly outward objects, when indeed the evil is inward, so poor Zelmane was no more weary of Basilius, than she was of herself when Basilius was gone: and ever the more, the more she turned her eyes to become her own judges. Tired therewith, she longed to meet her friend Dorus that upon the shoulders of friendship she might lay the burden of sorrow, and therefore went toward the other lodge, where among certain beeches she found Dorus, apparelled in flannel, with a goat’s-skin cast upon him and a garland of laurel mix’d with cypress leaves on his head, waiting on his master Dametas, who at that time was teaching him how with his sheep-hook to catch a wanton lamb, and how with the same to cast a little clod at any one that strayed out of company. And while Dorus was practising, one might see Dametas holding his hand under his girdle behind him, nodding from the waist upwards, and swearing he never knew man go more awkwardly to work, and that they might talk of book-learning what they would, but for his part he never saw more unfeaty fellows than great clerks were. But Zelmane’s coming saved Dorus from further chiding. {127} And so she beginning to speak with him of the number of his master’s sheep, and which province of Arcadia bare the finest wool, drew him on to follow her in such country-discourses; till, being out of Dametas’s hearing, with such vehemency of passion, as though her heart would climb into her mouth to take her tongue’s office, she declared unto him upon what briars the roses of her affections grew; how time still seemed to forget her, bestowing no one hour of comfort upon her; she remaining still in one plight of ill fortune, saving so much worse as continuance of evil doth in itself increase evil. “Alas, my Dorus,” said she, “thou seest how long and languishingly the weeks are passed over since our last talking. And yet I am the same, miserable I, that I was, only stronger in longing, and weaker in hoping.” Then fell she to so pitiful a declaration of the insupportableness of her desires that Dorus’s ears, not able to show what wounds that discourse gave unto them, procured his eyes with tears to give testimony how much they suffered for her suffering; till passion, a most cumbersome guest to itself, made Zelmane, the sooner to shake it off, earnestly entreat Dorus that he also, with like freedom of discourse, would bestow a map of his little world upon her that she might see whether it were troubled with such unhabitable climes of cold despairs and hot rages as hers was. And so walking under a few palm-trees (which being loving in her own nature seemed to give their shadow the willinglier because they held discourse of love) Dorus thus entered to the description of his fortune.