Hellayne was standing beside him. A pale moonbeam flickered through the interwoven branches.
She pointed to the castle of Avalon, dim in the distance. He made a quick forward step to see her face. Her eyes were very calm.
"Let us go, Tristan!" she said.
"My answer first," he insisted, gazing longingly, wistfully into the eyes that held a night of mystery.
"You have it," she said calmly.
"It was no answer," he pleaded, "from lover to lover—"
"Ah!" she replied, in her voice a great weariness which he had never noted before. "But here are neither loves nor lovers.—Look!"
And he looked.
Before them lay a colorless and lifeless sea, under the arch of a threatening sky. Across that sky dark clouds, with ever-changing shapes, rolled slowly, and presently condensed into a vague shadowy form, while the torpid waves droned a muffled and unearthly dirge.
He covered his eyes, overcome by a mastering fear of that dread shape which he knew, yet knew not.