Both men were silent for a while, the fire crackling sluggishly at their feet. Gorlois's eyes were on the window and the scrap of green woodland in the distance; Uther's eyes were on Gorlois's face. The latter, with the sore sensitiveness of a diseased spirit, felt the look and chafed at it. His petulance was plain enough to Uther as he sat and watched him, and pondered the man's trouble in his heart. "Gorlois." "Sire." "I am no gabbler." "True, my lord." "You are trouble ridden." Gorlois's eyes flashed up to Uther's, faltered, and fell. "What of that, sire?" he said curtly. "You have a deadly pride." "I own it." Uther leant forward in his chair, and looked earnestly into the other's face. "I too am a proud man in my trouble," he said, "buckling up unutterable things from the baseness of the world, jealous of my inward miseries. Yet when I see a strong man and a friend chained with the iron of a silent woe, I cannot keep my sympathy in leash, so tell him to unburden to a man whose pride feels for the pride of others." The words seemed to stir Gorlois from his lethargy of reserve and silence. Uther's very largeness of soul, his stately faith and courtesy, were qualities that won largely upon the mind, lifting it above factious things to the serene level of his own soul. Gorlois, impulsive spirit, could not rebuff such a man as Uther. There was a certain calm disinterestedness in the King's nature that made trust imperative and condemned secretiveness as churlish. Gorlois was an obstinate man in the extreme rendering of the epithet. He had spoken to no one of his trouble, leaving his thoughts to be inferred. Yet staunch sympathy like Gige's ring has power over most hidden things of the heart, and Gorlois was very human. "It is a woman, sire." "Mine was a woman, too." Gorlois scattered the half-dead embers with his foot. "I married a wife," he said. "I had never heard it." "Few have." "The woman's name?" "Never ask it, sire; it will soon lie with her in the dust." "These are grim words." "Grim enough for the man of my own house,--my own familiar friend." "Mother of Christ,--your friend!" "My brother in arms, sire." "The shedding of such blood seems like justice. Had I suffered thus--" "Sire, you warm to my temper." "It should be the sword." "Mine yet waits white for blood." Gorlois, implacable, grim as a werewolf, threw open the door of a closet and led Uther within the narrow compass of its walls. It was a little oratory, dim and fantastic, with lamps hanging from the roof, and black curtains over the narrow casement. Two waxen candles burnt with steady, windless flames upon the altar, and beneath their light glimmered a great sword, naked, and a cup half filled with purple wine. Gorlois took up the sword and touched it with his lips. "For the man," he said. Then he set the sword down beneath its candle and touched the goblet with his fingers; his black eyes glittered. "For the woman, sire." "And the candles?"