When Uther had spoken his whole soul in this mystery of the night, Merlin withdrew himself a little and looked long into the sky, his tall figure and strong face clear as chiselled stone in a slant gleam of the sun. For fully the third part of an hour he stood thus like a pillar of basalt, neither moving nor uttering a sound, while the sky fainted over the tree tops and flashed red fire from the armour of the King. Suddenly, as though he had caught inspiration from the heavens, prophecy came upon him like a wind at sunset. He stretched his hands to the sky. His body quivered; his eyes were as rubies in a mask of marble. "I have seen, O King! I have looked into the palpitating web of the stars, into the glittering aisles of the infinite." Uther strode out from the tree trunk where he had leant watching the man's cataleptic pose grow into the quick furor of prophecy. "Say on," he said. Merlin swept a hand towards him with a magnificence of gesture. "Thou art the star, the dragon is thy son. He shall compass Britain with a band of steel, beat back the wolves of heathendom, and cast stupendous glory over Britain's realm. His name shall shine in history, sun-bright, magnificent, and pure; his name shall be Arthur. Thus, O King! Uther of the Dragon, read I this vision of the night." Uther, a gradual lustre in his eyes, looked long at the sun behind the swart pillars of the forest. He seemed to gather vigour from the glow. Prophecy was in his thought, a prophecy that tempted the inmost dreamings of the heart, and linked up the past with promise of the future. To love, to be loved, to win the woman among women! To beget a son, a warrior, a king; to harden his body like to an oak, temper his heart like steel; to set the cross in his hands and send him forth against the beast and the barbarian like a god! Such, indeed, were the idyls of a King! "Merlin, I have no wife, and you speak to me of a son," was his sole answer. The retort echoed from the man. "The King must wed." "This is no mere choosing of a horse." "Sire, you can learn to love. It is not so difficult a thing, no more than falling down upon a bed of roses." The retort was in no wise suited to Uther's humour. "I am no boy to be married on the moment to cap the reading of a vision." "Sire!" "Bring me the woman I may love, if you are magical enough,--then bid me wed." "My lord, you mock me with a dream." "Not so." "She is dead then?" "On my soul I know not." "Then, sire--" "All women are dead to me save one. Conjure her into my being, and I will give you the wiser half of myself, even my heart." For an instant Merlin smiled--a smile like an afterglow in a winter sky,--clear, cold, and steely. He drew nearer Uther, his purple robe with its fantastic scroll-work dim in the twilight, his black hair falling down about his face. His words were like silken things purring from his lips. "My lord, tell me more." "You are a prophet. Read my past."