As mentioned earlier, God then becomes a rival of Guenever for Lancelot's love. Lancelot, in his "innocent love of God," attempts to hold on to his new, divine love, arguing to Guenever that "they could not very well go back to their old way, after the Grail" and that "had it not been for their guilty love, he might have been allowed to achieve the Grail." Guenever eventually recognizes Lancelot's newfound spirituality and tells him, "I feel as if I were sacrificing you, or us if you like, to a new sort of love." Lancelot still yearns for Guenever, however, and White presents this as the crux and key point of the entire Lancelot story.
Despite her initial understanding of Lancelot's epiphany, Guenever's need for human companionship eventually proves too strong for her. She finds the fact that "Lancelot persisted in remaining loyal to his Grail" simply unbelievable, and becomes a jealous and embittered castaway. Guenever can only think of love in terms of human qualities, and her bitterness dramatizes the issues at stake in the novel: worldly comfort at odds with spiritual grace. The fact that Lancelot again sleeps with Guenever (when he rescues her from Sir Meliagrance) only serves to stress the fickle, yet ironically earnest, nature of a man who knows what is right yet keeps turning away.
Even a novel with such a protagonist as Lancelot, whose allegiances are constantly shifting, has to end, and White meets the challenge of providing an ending in which Lancelot retains his ties to both the human and the divine forces that have governed his life. Sir Urre, a knight from Hungary, suffers from a curse in which none of his wounds can ever heal; he has come to Camelot because the only cure for his wounds is if "the best knight in the world had tended them and salved them with his hands." Everyone, including Arthur, is sure that Lancelot will be able to cure Sir Urre; however, Lancelot, who has fallen back into Guenever's bed, knows that he is far from "the best knight in the world" and is sure that his inability to cure the knight will be viewed, correctly, as his "punishment." When confronted with Sir Urre, Lancelot utters a short prayer in his mind: "I don't want glory, but please can you save our honesty?" The crowd erupts as Lancelot heals Sir Urre's wounds, but White offers his reader a different, final glimpse of Lancelot's triumph: "The miracle was that he was allowed to do a miracle."
