Uther had left Merlin gazing out upon the shimmering sea. The voice called him from the woods with plaintive peals of song. The man followed, holding to a grass-grown track that curled purposeless into the gloom. Moonlight and shadow were alternate upon his armour. Hope and despair were mimicked upon his face. His soul leapt voiceless and inarticulate into the darkened shrine of prayer. The voice came to him clearer in the forest calm. The gulf had narrowed; the words flew as over the waters of death. They were pure, yet reasonless, passionate, yet void, words barbed with an utter pathos that wounded desire. For an hour the King followed in the woods, drawing ever nearer, waxing great with prayer. Anon the voice failed him by a little stream that quivered dimly through the grass. A stillness that was ghostly held the woods. The moonlight seemed to shudder on the trees. A stupendous stupor weighed upon the world. A hollow glade opened sudden in the woods, a white gulf in the forest's gloom. Water shone there, a mere, rush-ringed, and full of mysterious shadows, girded by the bronzed foliage of stately beeches. Moss grew thick about the roots; dead leaves covered the grass. The man knelt in a patch of bracken, and looked out over the glade. A figure went to and fro by the water's brim, a figure pale in the moonlight, with a glimmering flash of unloosed hair. The man kneeling in the bracken pressed his hands over his breast; his face seemed to start out of the gloom like the face of one who struggles in the sea, submerged, yet desperate. Uther saw the woman halt beside the mere. He saw her bend, take water in her palms, and dash it in her face. Standing in the moonlight she smoothed her hair between her fingers, her hands shining white against the dark bosom of her dress. She seemed to murmur to herself the while, words wistful and full of woe. Once she thrust her hands to the sky and cried, "Pelleas! Pelleas!" The man kneeling in the shadow quivered like a wind-shaken reed. The moon climbed higher, and the woman by the mere spread her cloak upon a patch of heather, and laid herself thereon. Not a sound ravaged the silence; the woods were mute, the air rippleless as the steel-surfaced water. An hour passed. The figure on the heather lay still as an effigy upon a tomb. The man in the bracken cast one look at the stars, crossed himself, and crept out into the moonlight. Holding the scabbard of his sword, he skirted the mere with shimmering armour, went down upon his knees, and crawled slowly over the grass. Hours seemed to elapse before the black patch of heather spread crisp and dry beneath his hands. Breathing through dilating nostrils, he trembled like a craven who creeps to stab a sleeping friend. The moonlight showered vivid as with a supernatural glory. Tense anguish crowded the night with sound.