Merlin’s eyes seemed to look leagues away over moor, hill, and valley. A strange tenderness played upon his lips, and there was a radiance upon his face impossible to describe. It was like the face of a lover, a dreamer of dreams.
“A man is a mystery to himself,” he said.
“But to God?”
“I know no God, save the god my own soul. Let me live and die, nothing more. Why curse one’s life with a ‘to be’?”
Uther sighed heavily.
“It is a kind of fate to me,” he said, “inevitable as the setting of the sun, natural as sleep. Not for myself do I fear it.”
“Let Jehovah follow Jupiter into the chaos of fable. Sire, look yonder.”
Merlin’s eyes had caught life on the distant hillsides, life surging from the valleys, life, and the glory of it. Harness, helm, and shield shone in the sun. Gold, azure, silver, scarlet, were creeping from the bronzed green of the wilds. Silent and solemn the host rolled gradual into the full splendour of the day.
Uther’s eyes beheld them through a mist of tears.