When Gorlois and his knights had gone, Igraine unbarred the door, and passed down the narrow stair to the state chamber of the house, where a fire was burning. It was a solemn room, shadowed with many arches, with vaults inlaid with marble, its walls painted green and gold, its glimmering casements lozenged with fine glass. Furs were spread upon the mosaic floor; painted urns held flowers that bloomed in the mock summer of the room.
Igraine stood and warmed herself before the fire. From an altar-like pillar near she took storax and galbanum from brazen bowls, and scattered the resinous tears upon the flames. A pungent fragrance rose up into her nostrils. The flicker of the fire played upon her face, and set a lustre in her eyes. It was winter weather, and the warmth was welcome.
The refrain of her talk with Gorlois still ran at fever heat like a wild song through her brain. She was stirred to the deeps of her strong soul. For Gorlois she had no measure of pity. He was a rotten tree to her, a slab of granite, anything but quick flesh and blood capable of aspiration and desire. She hated him more for his pleading than for his tyranny, fearing to be pleased by one she dreaded. He was strenuous and obstinate. She knew that it would be great joy to her if she saw his face no more, and if his body crumbled in the rain on some bleak coast in Wales.
As she stood by the fire and looked into it with pondering eyes she heard a curtain drawn and the sound of a footstep on the threshold. Turning briskly, like one accustomed to suspicions, she saw the man Brastias in the doorway looking at her half-furtively, as though none too proud of the office thrust upon him. He had great grey eyes and a calm face. Bending stiffly to Igraine with his hand over his heart, he turned aside to a cabinet by the wall, took therefrom an illumined scroll of legendary tales, and sat down on a bench to read, as though he had no other business in the room.
Igraine’s long lip curled. She knew the meaning of the man’s presence there shrewdly enough. Going to a window she opened the casement frame and looked out on the winter scene. Usk winding silver to the sea, the purple roll of the bleak bare woods, the far sea itself dying a sullen streak into a sullen sky. It was dreary enough, and yet it suited her; she could have welcomed thunder and the rend of forked fire above the woods. Thought was fierce in her with the wind crying about the house like a wistful voice, the voice of days long dead.
To be free of Gorlois!
To cast off her present self like a rotten cloak!
To adventure liberty, though the peril were shrill as the wind through the swaying pines on the hillside!
To deal with Brastias!