It began to grow dark very quickly as she passed down the gradual slope towards the forest. The trees towered above her, a black mass rising again towards the east. Keen to see the man's mood, she hurried on and found him still steadfast in the great arch, that seemed like the gate of the wilderness, ready to abide her. A hundred paces more and her heart began to beat the faster, and the moil of the day's march dwindled before the influx of a rosier idyl. Every step towards Pelleas seemed to take her higher up the turret stair of love till her lips should meet those that bent at last from the gloom to hers. Pride and vexation lay fallen far below, dropped incontinently like a ragged cloak; a more generous passion shone out like cloth of gold; she was no longer weary. Her eyes were very bright, her face full of a splendid wistfulness, as she neared the man under the trees, looking up to see his face. Twilight lay deep violet under the wooelshawe, while horse and man were dim and impalpable, great shadows of themselves. Igraine could not see the man's face for the mask over the mezail of his helmet, and he was silent as death. She was quite close to him now and ready to speak his name, when he wheeled suddenly, looked back at her, and pointed into the wood with his long spear. She ran forward and would have taken hold of his bridle, but he waved her back and slanted his spear at her in mute warning. Igraine, heart-hungry, could hold herself no longer. "Man--man, are you stone?" He rode straight ahead into the night of the trees and said never a word. Igraine drew her breath. "Pelleas." "Ah, Igraine." The voice that came to her was muffled like the voice of a mourner, yet the girl thought she caught the old deep tone of it like the low cry of the wind. "Why do you vex me?" "Follow!" "Pelleas, Pelleas, I am no nun!" "Follow!" "I kept this truth from you too long." "Follow!" "Pelleas, would you hurt my heart more?" "Follow; God shall make all plain and good." She gave in with a half-sob, and bent quietly to the man's mood, though she had no notion what he purposed in his heart, or what his desires were in mystifying her thus. No doubt it would be well in the end if Pelleas bade her follow like a penitent and promised ultimate peace. At least he had not turned her away, and she trusted him to the death. He was a strong, deep-sensed soul, she knew, and her deceiving may have made him bitter in measure, and not easily appeased. In this queer trial of endurance, this tempting of her temper, she thought she read a penance laid upon her by the man for the way she had used his love.