When she had ended the tale Pelleas left the grass at her feet and began to pace under the trees like a sentinel on a wall. His scabbard clanged occasionally against his greaves. Masses of young bracken covered the ground between the trees with a rich carpet of green, and his armour shone like red wrath under the wreathing arcs of foliage. His face was dark and moody with the turmoil of thought, but there was no visible agitation upon him; nothing of the aspen, more of the unbending oak. Igraine leant against her tree and watched him with a curious care, wondering what would be the outcome of all this silence. Down in the valley the pool glistened, and she could see Garlotte walking in the cottage garden. How different was this child’s lot to hers. With what warm philosophy could she have changed Pelleas into a shepherd, and taken the part of Garlotte to herself.
Presently Pelleas stayed in his stride through the bracken, and came and stood before her, looking not into her face but beyond her into the deeps of the wood.
“Tell me more, Igraine.”
“What more would you hear from me?”
“That which is bitterest of all.”
“God, must I tell you that!”
“Let us both drink it to the dregs.”
Igraine’s face and neck coloured rich as one of Garlotte’s red roses, and she seemed to shrink from the man’s eyes behind the quivering sunlight of her hair. She put her hands to her breast and stood in a strain of thought, of struggle against the infinite unfitness of the past.
Pelleas saw her trouble, and his strong face softened on the instant. He had forgotten milder things in his grappling of the truth. Igraine’s red and troubled look revived the finer instincts of his manhood.