“Where?”

“Suffer me, sire, a moment.”

“Speak quickly. God knows, I have prayed like a Samson.”

Merlin cast his mantle from him, and stood out in the moonlight wrapped in the mystic symbolism of his robe. Sapphire and emerald, ruby and sardonyx, flashed with a ghostly gleam in the pale light, and caught the moonbeams in their folds. Merlin’s thin hands quivered like a spray of May blossom waving in the night wind, and his eyes were like the eyes of a leopard.

“Sire, thou wert Pelleas once.”

“I should remember it.”

“Thou art Pelleas again.”

“Again?”

“In thy red harness with thy painted shield, thy black horse; take them all.”

“The past rushes back like dawn.”