But still in her palace in Tara she was haunted by his passion and his misery, and, though she loved him not, she could not endure his pain, nor the triumph of grim death over his youth and beauty.

So at last she went to him again and said, "If it lies with me, Ailill, to heal thee of thy sickness, I may not let thee die." And she made a tryst to meet him on the morrow at a house of Ailill's between Dun Tethba and Tara, "but be it not at Tara," she said, "for that is the palace of the High King." All that night Ailill lay awake with the thought of his tryst with Etain.

But on the morrow morn a heaviness came upon his eyelids, and a druid sleep overcame him, and there all day he lay buried in slumbers from which none could wake him, until the time of his meeting with Etain was overpast.
But Etain, when she had come to the place of the tryst, looked out, and behold, a youth having the appearance and the garb of Ailill was approaching from Tethba.

He entered the bower where she was; but no lover did she there meet, but only a sick and sorrowful man who spake coldly to her and lamented the sufferings of his malady, and after a short time he went away.
Next day Etain went to see Ailill and to hear how he did.

And Ailill entreated her forgiveness that he had not kept his tryst, "for," said he, "a druid slumber descended upon me, and I lay as one dead from morn till eve.