Presently they came to where red poppies grew thickly in the golden meads. Igraine ran in among them, and began to make a great posy, while Pelleas watched her as her grey gown went amid the green and red. In due course she came back to him holding her flowers in her bosom.
“Scarlet is your colour,” she said, “and these are the flowers of sleep and of dreams for those that grieve. Hold them in the hollow of your shield for me.”
Pelleas obeyed her mutely. She began to sing a soft slumberous dirge while she walked beside the great black horse and plaited the flowers into its mane. The man watched her with a kind of wondering pain. The song seemed to wake echoes in him, like sea surges wake in the caverns of a cliff. He understood Igraine’s grace to him, and was grateful in his heart.
“How long were you mewed in Avangel?” he said, presently.
“Long enough,” quoth she, betwixt her singing, “to learn to love life.”
“So I should judge,” said Pelleas, curtly.
His tone disenchanted her. She threw the rest of the flowers aside, and walked quietly beside him, looking up with a frank seriousness into his face.
“I was placed there by my parents,” she said, by way of explanation, “and against my will, for I had no hope in me to be a nun. But the times were wild, and my father—a solemn soul—thought for the best.”
“But your novitiate. You had your choice.”