Yet, indeed for all that day, as she sat over her ’broidery, she did never cease to marvel and to wonder how it was possible that that strange young knight should so suddenly have vanished away and left only the poor gardener’s boy in his stead. Nor, for a long time, might she unriddle that strange thing.
Then, of a sudden, at that time when the heat of the day was sloping toward the cooler part of the afternoon, she aroused herself because of a thought that had come in an instant unto her. So she called the damsel Mellicene to come to her, and she bade her to go and tell the gardener’s lad for to fetch her straightway a basket of fresh roses for to adorn her tower chamber.
[Sidenote: _The gardener’s boy weareth his cap before the Lady Guinevere._]
So Mellicene went and did as she bade, and after considerable time the gardener’s lad came bearing a great basket of roses. And, lo! he wore his cap upon his head. And all the damsels in waiting upon the Lady Guinevere, when they saw how he wore his cap in her presence, cried out upon him, and Mellicene of the White Hand demanded of him: “What! How now, Sir boor! Dost thou know so little of what is due unto a king’s daughter that thou dost wear thy cap even in the presence of the Lady Guinevere? Now I bid thee straightway to take thy cap off thy head.”
And to her King Arthur made answer: “Lady, I cannot take off my cap.”
Quoth the Lady Guinevere: “And why canst thou not take off thy cap, thou surly fellow?”
“Lady,” said he, “I cannot take off my cap, because I have an ugly place upon my head.”
“Then wear thy cap,” quoth the Lady Guinevere. “Only fetch thou the roses unto me.”
[Sidenote: _The Lady Guinevere discovers the knight of the fountain._]
And so at her bidding, he brought the roses to her. But when he had come nigh unto the lady, she, of a sudden, snatched at the cap and plucked it off from his head. Then, lo! he was upon the instant transformed; for instead of the gardener’s boy there stood before the Lady Guinevere and her damsel the appearance of a noble young knight with hair and beard like threads of gold. Then he let fall his basket of roses so that the flowers were scattered all over the floor, and he stood and looked at all who were there. And some of those damsels in attendance upon the Lady Guinevere shrieked, and others stood still from pure amazement and wist not how to believe what their eyes beheld. But not one of those ladies knew that he whom she beheld was King Arthur. Nevertheless the Lady Guinevere remembered that this was the knight whom she had found so sorely wounded, lying in the hermit’s cell in the forest.