Before them lay a colorless and lifeless sea, under the arch of a threatening sky. Across that sky dark clouds, with ever-changing shapes, rolled slowly, and presently condensed into a vague shadowy form, while the torpid waves droned a muffled and unearthly dirge. He covered his eyes, overcome by a mastering fear of that dread shape which he knew, yet knew not. He knelt before her, took the hands he loved so well into his own and pressed upon them his fevered lips. "I do not understand--" he moaned. She regarded him fixedly. "I am another's wife--" His head drooped. "When my eyes first met yours they begged that my love for you might find response in your heart," he said, still holding on to those marvellous white hands. "Did you not accept my worship?" She neither encouraged nor repulsed him by word or gesture. And he covered her hands with burning kisses. After his passionate outburst had died to silence she spoke quietly, tremulously. "Tristan," she began, and paused as if she were summoning courage to do that which she must. "Tristan, this may not be." "I love you," he sobbed. "I love you! This is all I know! All I shall ever know. How can I support life without you? heart of my heart--soul of my soul?--What must I do, to win you for my own--to give you happiness?" A negative gesture came in response. "Is sin ever happiness?" "The priests say not! And yet--our love is not sinful--" "The priests say truth." Hellayne interposed calmly. He felt as if an immense darkness, the chaos of a thousand spheres, suddenly encompassed him, threatening to plunge him into a bottomless abyss of despair. Then he made a quick forward step. Her face was close to his. Wide eyes fastened upon him in a compelling gaze. "Tell me!" he urged, his own eyes lost in those unfathomable wells of dreams. "When love is with you--does aught matter? Does sin--discovery--God himself--matter?" With a frightened cry she drew back. But those steady, questioning eyes, sombre, yet aflame, compelled the shifting violet orbs. "Tell me!" he urged again, his face very close to her face. "Naught matters," she whispered faintly, as if under a spell. Then her gaze relinquished his, as she looked dreamily out upon the woods. There was absolute silence, lasting apace. It was the stillness of a forest where no birds sing, no breezes stir. Then a twig snapped beneath Hellayne's foot. He had taken her to his heart and, his strong arms about her, kissed her eyes, her mouth, her hair. She suffered his caresses dreamily, passively, her white arms encircling his neck. Suddenly he stiffened. His form was as that of one turned to stone. In the shadow of the forest beneath a great oak, hooded, motionless, stood a man. His eyes seemed like glowing coals, as they stared at them. Hellayne did not see them, but she felt the tremor that passed through Tristan's frame. The mantle's hood was pulled far down over the man's face. No features were visible.