This is a composition design for a larger pastel ( Christie's 2018 11 Dec lot 131) which the psychology of the characters is more developed. Previously the pastel version has been identified wrongly as a version of Chant D'Amor, although similar in character, this scene is more likely to be an episode from the Morte d'Arthur and made whilst the artist was working on the famous tapestries. ( 1891-4). Unlike Chant D'Amor, the knight is depicted as forlorn, unmoved by the damsel's song. Equally an alternative interpretation has to be considered, the scene could also be interpreted as being an illustration of Keat's poem La Belle Dame Sans Merci, which Burne-Jones had illustrated in the Little Holland House Album of 1859. The Theme of the femme fatale was of perennial interest to him. Tennyson treated the story in his Lancelot and Elaine in his Idylls of the King, in which Lancelot is unable to return the love of Elaine due to his obsession with Queen Guinevere. Lancelot appears here as in Tennyson, twice the age of Elaine.