He followed nearer; ruth began to work Against his anger in him, while he watched The being he loved best in all the world, With difficulty in mild obedience Driving them on: he fain had spoken to her, And loosed in words of sudden fire the wrath And smouldered wrong that burnt him all within; But evermore it seemed an easier thing At once without remorse to strike her dead, Than to cry “Halt,” and to her own bright face Accuse her of the least immodesty: And thus tongue-tied, it made him wroth the more That she could speak whom his own ear had heard Call herself false: and suffering thus he made Minutes an age: but in scarce longer time Than at Caerleon the full-tided Usk, Before he turn to fall seaward again, Pauses, did Enid, keeping watch, behold In the first shallow shade of a deep wood, Before a gloom of stubborn-shafted oaks, Three other horsemen waiting, wholly armed, Whereof one seemed far larger than her lord, And shook her pulses, crying, “Look, a prize! Three horses and three goodly suits of arms, And all in charge of whom? a girl: set on.” “Nay,” said the second, “yonder comes a knight.” The third, “A craven; how he hangs his head.” The giant answered merrily, “Yea, but one? Wait here, and when he passes fall upon him.” And Enid pondered in her heart and said, “I will abide the coming of my lord, And I will tell him all their villainy. My lord is weary with the fight before, And they will fall upon him unawares. I needs must disobey him for his good; How should I dare obey him to his harm? Needs must I speak, and though he kill me for it, I save a life dearer to me than mine.” And she abode his coming, and said to him With timid firmness, “Have I leave to speak?” He said, “Ye take it, speaking,” and she spoke. “There lurk three villains yonder in the wood, And each of them is wholly armed, and one Is larger-limbed than you are, and they say That they will fall upon you while ye pass.” To which he flung a wrathful answer back: “And if there were an hundred in the wood, And every man were larger-limbed than I, And all at once should sally out upon me, I swear it would not ruffle me so much As you that not obey me. Stand aside, And if I fall, cleave to the better man.”