The King spread his arms to the west, and under his black brows his eyes smouldered. "Am I Uther of Britain--and a King?" And again in a deep half-heard whisper-- "Igraine! Igraine! thou art true unto death." From the terrace below came sudden the sound of harping. It was Rivalin, the Court minstrel, singing as the sun went down-- "Quenched be all the bitter pain, When the roses bloom again Eyes shall smile through glimmering tears." The face of the King was like the face of a man who sees a vision. All the glow of the hills seemed in his eyes. His hands shook as he stretched them to the west, the west that was a chasm of torrential gold. "Igraine," he said, as in a dream. And again-- "Tintagel will I hurl into the sea." Jehan knelt and looked mutely at the King. The gloom of the roof seemed to cover him like a canopy, and the frescoes glimmered through the blue shadows. Uther wore a small crucifix about his neck. Jehan, full of a sense of tragedy, saw him tear the crucifix from its chain, and cast it at his feet. The priest at the altar, haloed by the glowing of his lamps, looked at the King, white and wondering. It was an exultant voice that made the chalice quiver. "Hitherto I have served a God," it said; "now I will serve my own soul!" V The woman's face, haloed by the gloom of the casement, still looked out from Tintagel over the solitary grandeur of sea and cliff. Igraine saw ships pass seldom athwart the west, but they brought no hope for her, for she thought herself alone, and served of none. How should Uther the King know that she was mewed in Tintagel at Gorlois's pleasure! Had he not commended her to the calm orchards and cloisters of a nunnery? Even the ring he had given her had been stolen by sheer force. Days came and went, dawn flooded the eastern woods with gold, and evening tossed her torches in the west. To Igraine they were as alike as the gulls that wheeled and winged white over the blue waters. There are few men of such despicable fibre that they are wholly ruled by the egotism of the flesh. Your complete villain is no frequent prodigy, being more the denizen of the regions of romance than of the common, trafficking, trivial world. There are bad men enough, but few Neros. Give a human being passions, pride, and intense egotism, and his potential energy for evil is unbounded. Virtue is often a mere matter of habit or circumstance. Joseph might have ended otherwise if Potiphar's wife had had more wit; and as for Judas, he was unfortunate in being made banker to a God.