Igraine's face was hard as stone as she watched the men moving in the courtyard below. She looked older than of yore, whiter, thinner in cheek and neck, her great eyes staunch though sad under her netted hair. Her face showed melancholy mingled with a constant scorn that had rarely found expression with her in the old days, save within the walls of Avangel. She looked like one who had endured much, suffered much, yet lost no whit of pride in the trial. Though she may have been blemished like a Greek vase smitten by some barbaric sword, she was her self still, brave, headstrong, resolute as ever. The shame of the things she had suffered had perhaps wiped out the gentler outlines of her character and left her more stern, more wary, less honest, more deep in her endeavours. There was no passive humility or patience about her soul, and she was the falcon still, though caged and guarded beyond her liberty. As she stood at the casement with the prophetic murmur of war in her ears, it seemed to her as though life surged to her feet and mocked her bondage like laughing water. The desire of liberty abode ever with her even to the welcoming of stagnant death. She thirsted for her freedom, plotted for it, dreamt of it with a zeal that was almost ferocious. Her life seemed a speculation, a perpetual aspiration after a state that still eluded her. In the Avangel days she had been wild and petulant. Then Pelleas had come through the green gloom of early summer to soften her soul and inspire all the best breath of the woman in her. Again, thanks to Gorlois, she had fallen with the usual reaction of circumstance upon evil times; the change had discovered the peevish discontent of the girl hardened into the strong wilfulness of the woman. She hated Gorlois with a fanatical immensity of soul. When the man was near her she felt full of the creeping nausea of a great loathing, and she waxed faint with hate at the veriest touch of his hands. His breath seemed to her more unsavoury than the miasma of a gutter, and it needed but the sound of his voice to bring all her baser passions braying and yelping against him. He had driven the religious instinct out of her heart, and she was in revolt against heaven and the marriage pact forged by the authority of the Church. She had often vowed in her heart that she could do no sin against Gorlois, her husband. He had no claim upon her conscience. The bondage had been of his making; let God judge her if she scorned his honour.