“God! what work.”
It was Gorlois’s testimony, wrung from him by the stress of sheer hard fighting. The storm-cloud crept across the sun and overcharged the world with gloom. The pool grew more black in its purple bed; the forest began to weave the twilight into its columned halls.
“You lack breath, sire.”
“I wait for you,” Uther said.
But the man of Tintagel was in a sinister mood for the moment. Genius moved his sweating brain. He dropped into philosophic brevities as he spat blood from his bruised lips.
“All for a woman,” he said thickly.
“True.”
“Are you much in love, sire?”
Uther answered him nothing, but waited with his sword over his shoulder.