Chapter Third
How Sir Geraint lived with the Lady Enid at Camelot. How he suspected her truth; how his suspicions were confirmed, and how he departed with her in search of adventure. Also how they met with three unusual adventures in the forest.
IT is not always well for a man to be married to a woman of half his age; for that which he thinks and loves she may neither think nor love, and that which she thinks and loves, he maybe does not think and does not love.
Now Sir Geraint was serious, as became his years, and Enid was gay and debonaire as became her youth, so that there were many sports and pastimes that she engaged in that he looked upon remotely and from afar, and not always without displeasure.
Amongst the lords of the Court of King Arthur was a young knight and lord, hight Sir Peregrans, who was son to King Ludd of Cornwall. This noble young knight-royal was very full of joy and gladness. He was ruddy-cheeked and gay, with broad black eyebrows and curly black hair, and he was ever ready for any sport or pastime that fell his way.
It befell that he and Enid were much together in company and sports of several kinds, and though Sir Geraint was too proud to appear to observe this, yet he did observe it and was much affected by it. For he would sometimes say to himself, “What pity it is that this dear lady of mine should be bound to my age and sobriety instead of to one like this Sir Peregrans who is in all ways suited to her!” Yet Sir Geraint would say nothing to Enid concerning his thoughts, but only kept those thoughts locked in his own heart, and so withdrew himself from her afar off.
This and several other things the Lady Enid observed, and it sometimes seemed to her either that her lord was in trouble or that he was offended, yet she wist not what offence she could have given to him in any way. For it did not seem to her that it could be any offence for her to play in the same sports with Sir Peregrans, but only that it was natural and seemly upon her part to do so.
Sir Geraint sits in thought.
Now one day Sir Geraint sat meditating concerning these things, and as he sat he gazed out of the window at the King’s Castle. What time his eyes beheld a wide and fruitful stretch of meadow-land and fields, of glebe and of a river that wound through all this fair level fruitful campagne like to a ribbon of pure and shining silver. The sun at that hour shot his slanting rays across the earth, so that all this fair prospect appeared, as it were, to be bathed in a pure golden brightness. From the level stretch of horizon, great clouds climbed up into the blue and radiant sky, peeping, as it were, over one another’s shoulders down upon the peaceful earth.
All this the eyes of Sir Geraint beheld, yet he saw nothing of it. For the sight of his soul was turned away from such things, and was directed inward upon himself, and there he beheld naught but gloom and darkness.