Chapters: Two

Once I knew a lonely man; A sad lonely man; A lonely man living in a world that did not know him. A sad man who hid his pain and wore a smile. In the morningtime he looked out of the window with weary eyes hating the dawn of another day, but in the nighttime he sat in the tavern and made all the people laugh and all the maidens blush. And when they were drunken and merry as could be, he hid in the corner away from their eyes. And he remembered Her.

She was love and purity and goodness, his heart. This he knew from the first moment, and then he did not know. At first sight he plunged into love and drank like a man starved. He pursued Her with ardor, Her love was like an elixir running in his veins. At night he dreamed of Her, at noon he craved a sweet word or a gentle smile. She possessed him, She evaded him and flitted out of reach until he opened up his heart and lay it at Her feet, and then She loved him.

Suddenly afraid, he awakened as from a dream. He was afraid to be thought less than a man. And so while She waited by the lake for their evening song he took to the street and sought a loose maiden with no name to lay with. Night after night She waited, and night after night he took more maidens to his bed until their faces were one. Fearing for Her love, She sought him in the streets until She found him in the arms of the tavern wench. She vowed that he would be Her first and last love, the only one She would ever love or lose. She was never seen in the village again.

Now he is a shell of the man he used to be, living in a world that does not know him, remembering Her....