The woman on the couch tossed her slipper from her small foot, and struck a series of snapping chords from the guitar that she held in her bosom. There was a certain rich insolence in her look,--a sensuous wickedness that was wholly poetic. The man bent forward from his stool, lifted the slipper, and kissed the foot whence it had fallen. He won a smile from the face bowered up in cushions, a smile like sunlight on a brazen mirror, brilliant, clear, metallic. There was a fine flush on her face, and the star on her bosom rose and fell as her breathing seemed to quicken and deepen for the moment. Her fingers plucked waywardly at the strings as she looked out from the window towards the sea. "I love life," she said. "Surely." "The pomp, the pride, the glory of being great. I have a future for you." A kind of spiritual echo burnt in the man's eyes. "And my wife?" "You are still something of a madman." "So you say." "I--indeed!" He bent forward with a sudden eruption of passion and kissed her foot again, till she drew it away under the folds of her dress. "Ah, you are still a little mad," she said, turning and smiling at him with her quick eyes; "bide so, my dear lord; I can suffer it." "And yet--" "I hate her! I hate her! I hate her!" "Bah!--she cannot harm you." "I hate her for being a martyr, for being strong, for thinking herself a saint. Pah!--how I could scratch her proud, big face. She humiliates me because of her misery, because she is contented to suffer. It is impossible to trample such a woman underfoot." The man gave a queer laugh. "You are still envious." "I envious,--I!" "Because she is never humbled, never asks mercy." "Curse her, let her die! Come and fan me, I am sleepy." On the southern side of the central tower, between it and the State quarters of the castle, lay the garden of Tintagel. It was a lustrous nook, barriered by grey walls, sheltered from the sea wind, and open to the full stare of the sun. Sombre cypresses lifted their spires above flower-beds mosaicked red, gold, and blue. The paths were tiled with coloured stones, and bordered with helichryse. In the centre of all a pool glimmered from a square of bright green grass. The window in the tower that had so seized upon the lad Jehan's heart looked out upon this square of colour that shone beneath the extreme blue of the summer sky. The casement was an open mihrab whence tragedy could look out upon the world. The glory of the sea, the sky, the cliffs, contrasted with the twilight tint of the prison room.