"William Morris - The Wood Beyond the World" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morris William)

please thee not, make no plaint thereof to me, but depart at thy will. Now is this talk betwixt us
overlong, since, as thou seest, I and this King’s Son are in converse together. Art thou a King’s
Son?”


“Nay, Lady,” said Walter, “I am but of the sons of the merchants.”


“It matters not,” she said; “go thy ways into one of the chambers.”



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And straightway she fell a-talking to the man who sat beside her concerning the singing of the
birds beneath her window in the morning; and of how she had bathed her that day in a pool of the
woodlands, when she had been heated with hunting, and so forth; and all as if there had been
none there save her and the King’s Son.


But Walter departed all ashamed, as though he had been a poor man thrust away from a rich
kinsman’s door; and he said to himself that this woman was hateful, and nought love-worthy,
and that she was little like to tempt him, despite all the fairness of her body.


No one else he saw in the house that even; he found meat and drink duly served on a fair table,
and thereafter he came on a goodly bed, and all things needful, but no child of Adam to do him
service, or bid him welcome or warning. Nevertheless he ate, and drank, and slept, and put off
thought of all these things till the morrow, all the more as he hoped to see the kind maiden some
time betwixt sunrise and sunset on that new day.




CHAPTER XII

THE WEARING OF FOUR DAYS

IN THE WOOD BEYOND THE WORLD

He arose betimes, but found no one to greet him, neither was there any sound of folk moving
within the fair house; so he but broke his fast, and then went forth and wandered amongst the
trees, till he found him a stream to bathe in, and after he had washed the night off him he lay
down under a tree thereby for a while, but soon turned back toward the house, lest perchance the
Maid should come thither and he should miss her.


It should be said that half a bow-shot from the house on that side (i.e. due north thereof) was a
little hazel-brake, and round about it the trees were smaller of kind than the oaks and chestnuts
he had passed through before, being mostly of birch and quicken-beam and young ash, with