Garin spoke. “On a Tuesday you were Jael the herd. On a Thursday, in the middle of the day, you came with your ladies to a lawn by the stream that flows by Our Lady in Egypt—the lawn of the plane, the poplar and the cedar, the stone chair beneath the cedar, and the tall thick laurels rounding all.” He was knight and poet and singer now—Garin of the Golden Island—knight and poet and singer and another besides. “A nightingale had sung me into covert there. I followed it down the stream, from grove to grove, and it sung me into covert there. The laurels were about me. I rested so close to the cedar—so close to the stone chair! One played a harp—you moved with your ladies to the water’s edge—you came up the lawn again to the three trees. You were robed in blue, my princess; your veil was long and threaded with silver and gold, and it hid your face. I never saw your face that day—nor for long years afterward! You sat in the stone chair—” “Stop!” said the Princess Audiart. She sat perfectly still in the rich dusk. Air and countenance had a strange hush, a moment of expressionless waiting. Then uprushed the dawn. He saw the memory awaken, the wings of knowledge outstretch. “Ah, my God!” she whispered. “As I sat there, the strangest breath came over me—sense of a presence near as myself—” The rose in her face became carnation, she sprang to her feet, turned aside. The fire came between her and Garin; she paced up and down in the shadowy space between the tree-trunks that were like the Saracen pillars. Moments passed, then she returned and stood beside the stone. Garin bent his knee. “My Lady Audiart, you, and only you, in woman form, became to me her whom for years I have sung, naming her the _Fair Goal_.... I left that covert soon, going away without sound. I only saw you veiled, but all is as I have said.... But now, before I go to Castel-Noir, there is more that I would tell to you.” “Speak at your will,” said the princess.