To Igraine at first there was some embarrassment in the ingenuous methods of this child of the forest. It was in measure disturbing to be confronted with a pair of blue eyes that looked at one like two pools of truth, and a pair of lips that naively remarked: "You seem pale, lady, and in pain; you slept little, and talked even when you slept. I am rosy and cheerful, and I sleep from dusk till dawn. What is there in your heart that is not in mine?" Still, with the abruptness once essayed, there was a refreshing sincerity in Garlotte's openness of heart. It was as the first plunge into a clear, cool pool--a gasp at the first moment, then infinite warmth, intense kindling of all the senses, with the clean ripples bubbling at the lips and the swinging water buoying up the bosom. Garlotte recalled Lilith--Radamanth's daughter--to Igraine, only that she had more penetration, more liberty of thought and character. The one was as a warm wind that lulled, the other a breeze blowing over open water--clean, invigorating, kind. Igraine's mood of unrest found refuge in the valley, and in Garlotte's cottage. She won some measure of inward calmness in the simple life, the simple tasks, that kept the more sinister energies of the mind at bay. It contented her for a season with its companionship, its air of home, its green quiet and tranquil beauty. Garlotte's cheerfulness of soul, like some penetrating essence, suffused itself upon Igraine, despite the militant savour of things more turbulent. She fell into temporary contentment almost against her will, even as sleep enforces itself upon a brain extravagantly possessed by the delirium of fever. For all the quiet of the place, circumstances were gathering and moving down upon her with that ghostly and inevitable fatefulness that constitutes true tragedy. No one could have seemed more hidden from the eye of fate than she in the deep umbrage of the trees, yet often when the heart imagines itself most secure from the factious meddling of the world, the far, faint cry of destiny smites on the ear like some sudden stirring of a wind at night. It was late evening, on the fifth day of Igraine's sojourn in the valley. The day had been dull, grey, and colourless, wrapped in a blue haze of rain that had fallen heavily, drenching the woods and making monotonous music on the water. Towards evening the sky had melted to a serene azure; the air was a web of shimmering amber, the west streamed through a mist of gold, and every leaf glittered with dew. A luminous vapour hovered over the little mere, and there were rain pools in the meadows that burnt with a hundred sunsets like clear brass.