Standing by the window watching the knights saddling for their lord's sally, she heard heavy footsteps mounting up the stairs, and the ring of steel-tipped shoes along the gallery. The footsteps were deliberate, and none too fast, as though the man walked under a burden of thought. A shadow seemed to pass over Igraine's face. She slipped from the window, ran across the room, shot the bolt of the door, and stood listening. A hand tried the latch. She knew well enough whose fist it was that rattled on the oaken panels. Her face hardened to a kind of cold malevolence, and she laughed noiselessly in her sleeve. A terse summons came to her from the gallery. "Wife, we ride at once." The man could not have made a worse beginning. There was a suggestion of tyranny in a particular word that was hardly temperate. Igraine leant against the door; she was still smiling to herself, and her hands fingered the embroidered tassel of the latch. "We are late on the road; I can make no tarrying." The door quivered a moment as though shaken by a gusty wind. Everything was quiet again, and Igraine could hear the man breathing. Putting her mouth to the crack between post and hinge-board she laughed stridently as though in scorn. "Igraine!" The voice was half-imperative, half-appealing. "My very dear lord!" "Are you abed?" "No, dear lord." "Open to me; I would kiss your lips before I sally." "You have never kissed me these many days." "True, wife; is it fault of mine?" "Nor shall again, dear lord, if I have strength." She heard the man muttering to himself a moment, but this time there was no smiting of the door, no fume and tempest. His mood seemed more temperate, less masterful, as though he were half heavy at heart. "Igraine--" "Why do you whimper like a dog?" she said; "go, get you to war. What are you to me?" "When will you learn reason?" "When you are dead, sire." "Perhaps I deserve all this." "Are you so much a penitent?" Her mockery seemed to lift Gorlois to a higher range of passion, and there was great bitterness in his voice as he tossed back words to her with a quick kindling of desire. "Woman, I have been hard in the winning of you, but, God knows, you are something to me." "God knows, Gorlois, I hate you." His hand shook the door. "Let me in, Igraine." "Break down the door; you shall come at me no other way." "Woman, woman, I am a fool; my heart smarts at leaving you." "You sound almost saintly." "I have left Brastias in charge of you." "Thanks, lord, for a jailer." Igraine drew back from the door and stood at her full height with her hands crossed upon her bosom. She quivered as she stood with the intense effort of her hate. Gorlois still waited without the door, though she could not hear him moving. The silence seemed like the deep hush that falls between the blustering stanzas of a storm. "Igraine!"