Pelleas stood and shut his eyes to the sun. A red glare smote into his brain; love seemed numb in him and his blood stagnant. Prayer eluded him like a vapour. Looking out again over wood and valley, the golden haze, the torpor of the trees mocked him with a lethargy that smiled at the impotence of man. And Igraine! He saw her prone beneath the green mist of the fern fronds, lying with her face pillowed on her arms, her hair spread like a golden net over the brown wreckage of the bygone year. To what a pass had their love come! Better, he thought, to have lived a king solitary on a throne than to have wandered into youth again to give and win such dolor. His face was dark as he stood and looked at the woman's violet surcoat gleaming low under the bracken. How symbolical this attitude seemed of all that had fallen upon his heart--love cast down upon dead leaves! Igraine had feared his honour. Pelleas feared for it in another sense as he looked at the woman, and felt his pity clamouring for life. He could have given his soul to comfort her if no shame could have come upon her name thereby. As it was, some spiritual hand seemed at his throat stifling aught of love that found impulse on his lips. A superhuman sincerity chilled him into silence, and held him in bondage to the truth. A face stared up from the bracken, wan, tearless, and tragic. The wistfulness of the face made him quail within his harness. He knew too well what was in Igraine's heart, and the look that questioned him like the look of a wounded hare. Her eyes searched his face as though to read her doom thereon. There was no whimpering, no noise, no passionate rhetoric. A great quiet seemed to take its temper from the silence of the woods. "Pelleas." "Yes, Igraine." "Tell me what is in your heart." Pelleas hung his head; he could not look at her for all his courage. She was kneeling in the bracken with her hands crossed over her breast and her face turned to his with the white wistfulness of a full moon. Pelleas felt death in his heart, and he could not speak nor look into her eyes. "Pelleas." "Child." "You do not look at me." "Great God, would I were blind!" The truth came crying to her like the wild cry of a bird taken by a weasel in the woods. A great sobbing shook her; she fell down and caught Pelleas by the knees. "Pelleas, Pelleas!" "My God, Igraine, I stifle!" "Don't leave me, don't send me away." "What can I say to you?" "Only look into my eyes again." Pelleas put his fists before his face; the girl felt him quiver, and he seemed to twist in an agony like a man dangling on a rope. Igraine's hands crept to his shoulders; she drew herself by his body as by a pillar till her face met his and she lay heavy upon his breast. "Pelleas!" Her breath was on his lips, and her hair flooded over his hands like golden wine. "Pelleas, Pelleas!" The words came with a windless whisper. "Have pity, Igraine." "I will never leave you." "Gorlois's wife!" "Never, never!"