“Ah, Igraine, said I not you were very wonderful?”
“No, no, I am only a woman, only a woman.”
“God give me such a wife.”
The word was keen as the barb of a lance. Pelleas’s head was bowed over the girl’s hand as he pressed his lips to the gold circlet of hair, and he did not see the frown of pain upon her face. Wife! What a mockery, what bitterness! The sky seemed black for a moment, the valley bare with the blasts of winter and the moan of tortured trees. She half choked in her throat, and her heart seemed to fail within her like a bowl that is broken. Yet there was a smile on her face when Pelleas looked up from the circlet of her hair with the pride of love in his large eyes.
“What ails you, Igraine?”
“A mere thought of the past.”
“Tell it me.”
“No, no, it is a nothing, a mere vapour, and it has passed. How warm your lips are to my fingers. Tell me of yourself, Pelleas.”
“But this armour, Igraine?”
"I took it from a dead knight, God rest his soul. I have wandered long in Wales, yet ever drew to Caerleon where folk spoke your name, yet never might I come near you, lest—lest you were too great for me."