Garlotte and Igraine had been bathing in the mere. They had come up from the water to dry themselves upon a napkin of white cloth, the bronze-gold and brown hair of each meeting like twin clouds, while their linen lay like snow on the trailing branches of a tree near the pool. Their limbs and shoulders gleamed against the silver-black mirror spread by the mere; their voices made a mellow sound through the valley as they talked. Igraine had fastened her violet surcoat about her beneath her breasts; Garlotte's blue smock still hung from a branch above her head. As they sat under the tree, drying their hair and looking over the pool to the forest realm beyond, Igraine told the girl much of the outer world as she had seen it; nor was her instruction unleavened by a certain measure of cynicism--a bitterness that surprised Garlotte not a little. The girl had great dreams of the glories of old cities, the splendour of court life, the zest of a mere material existence. "You do not love the great world," she said. "Once, child, I did. Everything outside a convent wall seemed good to me; I thought men heroes, and the world a faerie place; who has not! Thoughts change with time: that which I once hungered for, now I despise." "I have never been into a great city, not even into Caerleon. My father loved the country and said it was God's pasture." "I would rather have a dog for a friend than most men, child. Man is always thinking of his stomach, his strength, or his passion; he is vain, dull, and surly often; takes delight in slaying dumb things; drinks beer, and sleeps like a log save for his snoring." "But Renan doesn't." "There are some _men_, child, among the swine." "And the women?" "I have known good women." "In the convent?" "I suppose there they were good, just as stones that lie in the grass are good in that they do very little harm." "But they served God!" "Mere habit, just as you eat your dinner." "A hard saying." "Your sayings would be hard, child, if you had learnt what I have learnt of the world." Garlotte pulled her blue smock from the tree and wrapped it round her shoulders. "But you love God?" she said. "What is God?" "The Great Father who loves all things." "Methinks then I am nothing." "Nothing, Igraine?" "You say God loves all men and women. Why, then, have I been cursed with perversities ever since I was born, tormented with contradictions, baffled, and mocked, till the eternal trivialities of life now make my soul sick in my body?" "Sorrow is heaven sent to chasten, just as rain freshens the leaves." "Old, old proverb. Rain comes from clouds; clouds hide the sun; how can sorrow be good, child, when it darkens the light of life, hides God from the heart, and makes the soul bitter?" "That seems the wrong spirit, Igraine."