“Look not there, Igraine, but into your own heart and into the gold of faith.”
“I have no heart to look to, child.”
“Save into a man’s. And it was a good heart.”
“Good as a god’s.”
“Then look into it still.”
“You speak like a mother.”
They had talked on into the dusk of night, forgetful of time, hearing only the dripping from the leaves, seeing nothing but the short stretch of water and herbage at their feet. Yet an hour ago a figure in a palmer’s cloak and cowl had come out from the western forest and stood leaning upon its staff, to stare out broodingly over the valley. The laurel green of the man’s cloak harmonised so magically with the green of grass and tree that it was difficult to isolate his figure from the framing of wood and meadow.
The pilgrim had stood long in the shadows and watched the two white forms come up out of the waters of the pool. He had seen them sit and dry their hair under the tree as the dusk crept down. While they talked he had passed down towards the cottage, accompliced by the trees, slipping from trunk to trunk, to enter the cottage itself while the girls’ faces were turned from it towards the pool. From one of the narrow casements his cowled face had looked out; he had marked Igraine’s red gold shimmering hair; he had seen her face for a moment, also the shield hanging in the room with its cloven heart and white lilies, the sword and helmet, the harness of workmanship so subtle. When he had seen all this he had stolen out again into the gloaming, a thin gliding streak of green under the gnarled thorns and the night-bosomed cedars. The forest had taken him to its depths again and the unutterable silence of its shades. The girls by the pool had heard no sound, nor dreamt of the thing that had been so near, watching like a veritable ghost through the mist of the mere’s twilight.
Caerleon slept under the moon, a dream city in a land of dreams. Its walls were like ivory in a dark gloom of green. The tower of the palace of the king caught a coronet from the stars, while in the window of an upper room a thin flame flickered like a yellow rose blown athwart the black foliage of the night. Within blood-red curtains breathed over the arched door; a little altar stood against the eastern wall, guarded above by angels haloed with gold, standing in a mist of lilies with wings of crimson and green. The silence of the hour seemed embalmed in silver—so pure, so still, so hallowed was it.