“I will have no God but you, Pelleas.”
The man took his hands from his face and looked into Igraine’s eyes. A strong shudder passed over him, and he seemed like a great ship smitten by a wave, till every fibre groaned and quivered in his massive frame.
A green calm covered the valley, and the whole world seemed to faint in the golden bosom of the day. Not the twitter of a bird broke the vast hush of the forest. The sunlit aisles climbed into a shadowland of mysterious silence, and an azure quiet hung above the trees. As for Pelleas and Igraine, their two lives seemed knotted up with a cord of gold. They had mingled breath, and taken the savour of each other’s souls. Yet for all the glory of the moment it was but autumn with them—a pomp of passion, a red splendour dying while it blazed into the grey ruin of a winter day.
Igraine read her doom in the man’s face. It was the face of a martyr, pale, resolute, yet inspired. A dry sob died in her throat, and her hands dropped from the man’s shoulders. Pelleas stood back and looked at her with a warm light in his dark eyes, the green woods rising behind him like a bank of clouds.
“Igraine.”
She nodded, felt miserable, and said nothing.
“I cannot love you easily.”
Igraine’s eyes stared at him with a mute bitterness. She was a woman, and thought like a woman; mere saintly philosophy was beyond her.
“You are too good a man, Pelleas,” she said.
“I would hold my love in my heart like a great pearl in a casket of gold.”