And Vivien answered smiling mournfully: “O not so strange as my long asking it, Not yet so strange as you yourself are strange, Nor half so strange as that dark mood of yours. I ever feared ye were not wholly mine; And see, yourself have owned ye did me wrong. The people call you prophet: let it be: But not of those that can expound themselves. Take Vivien for expounder; she will call That three-days-long presageful gloom of yours No presage, but the same mistrustful mood That makes you seem less noble than yourself, Whenever I have asked this very boon, Now asked again: for see you not, dear love, That such a mood as that, which lately gloomed Your fancy when ye saw me following you, Must make me fear still more you are not mine, Must make me yearn still more to prove you mine, And make me wish still more to learn this charm Of woven paces and of waving hands, As proof of trust. O Merlin, teach it me. The charm so taught will charm us both to rest. For, grant me some slight power upon your fate, I, feeling that you felt me worthy trust, Should rest and let you rest, knowing you mine. And therefore be as great as ye are named, Not muffled round with selfish reticence. How hard you look and how denyingly! O, if you think this wickedness in me, That I should prove it on you unawares, That makes me passing wrathful; then our bond Had best be loosed for ever: but think or not, By Heaven that hears I tell you the clean truth, As clean as blood of babes, as white as milk: O Merlin, may this earth, if ever I, If these unwitty wandering wits of mine, Even in the jumbled rubbish of a dream, Have tript on such conjectural treachery— May this hard earth cleave to the Nadir hell Down, down, and close again, and nip me flat, If I be such a traitress. Yield my boon, Till which I scarce can yield you all I am; And grant my re-reiterated wish, The great proof of your love: because I think, However wise, ye hardly know me yet.”