A hand plucked him by the heel as he lay curled on the rock watching, the cavalcade flickering away into the green. Looking down, he saw the strong face of Mark of the guard. There was a smile on the man's lips, and to Jehan there seemed something prophetic in his eyes. He climbed down and stood looking into the other's face, the mute, trusting look of a dog. Mark took him by the shoulder. "The sea is blue and gold, and the 'Priest's Pool' like a violet well." "There is time for a swim." "We will watch for a sail from the cliffs." "And you will tell me more of Pelleas and Igraine." Mark was in a visionary mood; he used his spear as a staff and talked little. A sleepy sea bubbled a line of foam along the shore. Bleak slopes rolled greenly against an azure sky, and landwards crag and woodland stood steeped in a mist of sunlight. Jehan, sedulous and reverent, watched the passionless calm of thought upon the man's face. His eyes were turned constantly towards the sea with the hope of one waiting for a white sail from the underworld. When they had gone a mile or more along the cliffs, they came to a path leading to a bay whose lunette of sand shone red gold above the foam. It was a place of crags and headlands, poised sea billows, purple waters pressing from the west. Jehan sat on a stone and waited. Mark took his cloak and bound it to the staff of his spear. Jehan watched him as he stood at his full height like a tall pine on the edge of the cliff and lifted his spear at arm's length above his head. Seawards, dim and distant like a pearl over the purple sea, Jehan saw a sail strike out of the vague west. Mark still held the cloak upon his spear. Jehan understood something of all this. His mind, packed with plots and subtleties, shone with the silvery aureole of romance. The sail grew against the sky, and a ship loomed gradual out of the west. Mark shook the cloak from his spear, and climbed down the path that curled from the cliff with Jehan at his heels. Below, the waves swirled in amid the rocks and ran ripple on ripple up the yellow sand. The whole place seemed filled with the hoarse underchant of the sea. In a narrow part of the track Mark stopped suddenly, and stood leaning on his spear. Jehan nearly blundered into him, but saved himself by the help of a tuft of grass. The man's face was on a level with the lad's, and his eyes seemed to look into Jehan's soul. He pointed to the distant headland, where the towers of Tintagel rose against the sky. "Death waits yonder," he said. "For whom?" "Igraine,--Gorlois's wife." Jehan looked at him with all his soul. The man was no longer the quaint, vapouring soldier, but a being of different mould, keen, solemn, even magnificent. Jehan felt himself on the verge of romance; the man's face seemed to stare down fear. "And Pelleas!" he said. "Pelleas?" "Art thou not Pelleas?" Mark smiled in his eyes. "Your dreams fly too fast," he said. "And yet--"