After the barren months of winter, and the long bondage in Tintagel, it seemed ah idyllic thing to be so served, so comforted. And was this faery time but for an hour, a day, and no longer? Was she but to see the man's face, to feel the touch of his hands, the grand calm of his love, before losing him, perhaps for life? Her heart fluttered in her like a smitten bird. And Pelleas, too, what a thrust lurked for the man, a blow to be given in the name of truth. How could she speak to him of Gorlois when he came and looked at her with those eyes of his? Igraine had never felt such misery as this even in the gloomy galleries of Tintagel. It tried her courage to the death to face Pelleas's wistful gaiety, and the adoration that beamed on her from his eyes. "Dear heart, it is dawn--it is dawn!" Pelleas held her hands, and waited for her lips to be turned to his. Instead, he saw lowered lids and quivering lashes, lips that were plaintive, a face white beneath a wealth of hair. "Ah, Igraine, you do not look at me." Her eyes trembled up to his with a sudden infinite lustre. "Pelleas!" "Girl, girl!" "Ah, I have hardly slept." "Nor I, Igraine." "I think I am worn out with thinking of you." "Ha, little woman, you are extravagant; you will die like a flower even while I hold you in my bosom." Garlotte came out from the cottage, and was kissed by Pelleas on the lips. The girl's eyes were red and heavy; she had been crying but a moment ago in the shadow of the cottage room, and she was timid and very solemn. Pelleas looked at her like a big brother. "Come now, little sister," he said, with a rare smile; "methinks you must be in love too by your looks." "Yes, lord." "Said I not so? You women take things so to heart." "Yes, lord." "What a solemn face, little sister!" Garlotte mastered herself for a moment, then burst into tears and ran back into the cottage. Pelleas coloured, looked troubled, glanced at Igraine, thinking he had hurt the girl's heart with his words. Igraine's face startled him as if the visage of death had risen up suddenly amid the flowers. He stood mute before her watching her starved lips, her drawn face, her eyes that stared beyond him with a kind of cold frenzy. "Pelleas, Pelleas!" It was like the wild cry of a woman over her dead love. The sound struck Pelleas with a vague sense of stupendous woe, a dim prophecy of evil like the noise of autumn in the woods. Before he could gather words, Igraine had turned and run from him as in great fear, skirting the pool and holding for the black yawn of the forest aisles. Pelleas started to follow her in a daze of wonder. Was the girl mad? Had love turned her brain? What was there hid in her heart that made her wing from him like a dove from a hawk?