The reigning princess came and sat beside her step-dame. “It is singing and beauty just to be here for a moment under this tree!” She shut her eyes. “To cease from striving and going on! To rest the whole at one point of achieved sweetness, even if it were not very high sweetness—just there—for aye! It would tempt a god....” The next day she rode westward from the town. Again the day was dry, with an intense and arrowy light. She rode with a small train some distance into the tawny land, to a strong castle that, strongly held, might give Montmaure a check. She rode here to give wise praise, to speak to those who garrisoned it words of the most courageous expectation. She ate with her train in hall, rested in the cool of the thick-walled room for the hour of extremest heat, spoke again with feeling, wit, and fire to the knights and men-at-arms who must desperately hold the place; then, with her following, said farewell and good-speed. She turned back toward Roche-de-Frêne, through the burned, high summer country. The sun was in the western heaven. Tall cypresses by the road cast shadows of immense length. There lay ahead a grove of pine and oak, a certain famous cold and bubbling spring, and a meeting with a lesser, winding road. “I am thirsty,” said the princess. “Let us draw rein at Saint Martha’s Well.” Entering the grove, they found another there before them, athirst and drinking of the well. A knight in a blue surcoat knelt upon the grass beside the water and drank. His shield rested against a tree, he had taken off his helmet and placed it on the grass beside him, a squire held his horse. As the princess and her train came to the well-side he rose, stepped back with a gesture of courtesy. He had in his hand a cup of horn set in silver. Several of those with the princess dismounted—one spoke to the stranger knight. “Fair sir, we have no cup! If you will be frank with yours—” Garin stooped again to the water, rinsed and filled the cup, and carried it to the side of the white Arabian. The princess took it, thanked him, and drank. Her eyes noted, over the rim of the cup, the cross, proclaiming that he had fought in Palestine. Below it, on the breast of his blue surcoat, was embroidered a bird with outstretched wings. She drank, returned the cup and thanked the knight. He was deeply bronzed, taller, wider of shoulder, changed here and changed there from Garin the Squire. In his face sat powers of thought and will that had hardly dwelled there so plainly years ago. She was not aware that she had seen him before. She saw only a goodly knight, and possessing, as she did, wide knowledge of the chivalry within her princedom, wondered whence he had come. She had viewed famed knights from many a land, but she could not recall this traveller with his embroidered bird. She spoke to him with her forthright graciousness. “Fair sir, are you for Roche-de-Frêne?”