Then she remembered Pelleas's horse. Going to the stable behind the manor, she found the beast stalled there, though Morgan's horses had been taken by the men in the barge. Igraine took hay from the rack, gave him a measure of oats in his manger, and watered him with water from the mere. Then she stood and combed his mane with her fingers as he fed. Some of the poppies she had plaited there were dead and drooping in the black hair. She thought as she unbound the withered things how nearly Pelleas's life had withered with theirs. She was very happy in her heart, and she sang softly the low tender songs women love when their thoughts are maying. Igraine passed the whole morning in the garden, going every now and again to the porch to open the doors gently, and peep in upon the sleeper. She gathered a basket of fruit and a lapful of flowers. About noon she went in, and bringing jars from the triclinium, she filled them with water and garnished them with flowers. These jars she set in array about Pelleas's bed, one of tiger lilies and one of white lilies; a bowl of roses at his head, a jar of hollyhocks and one of thyme, and fragrant herbs at the foot. Moreover, she strewed the coverlet with pansies, and scattered rose leaves on his pillow. Then she went to the chapel to pray awhile, before sitting down to watch beside his bed. Pelleas woke about an hour after noon had turned. At his first stirring, Igraine was hanging over him like a mother, with her hands on his. Pelleas looked up at her, saw the flowers about his bed, and, risking her menaces, spoke his first word. "Igraine," he said. She put her face down to his. "I am much stronger," he said; "I can talk now." "Perhaps a very little," she answered, with her eyes on his. "Igraine!" "Yes, Pelleas." "You are very wonderful." "Pelleas!" she said redly. "I should have died without you, for I was witless, and coughing blood." "I thought you would die," she said very softly, with her eyes downcast. "I held you in my arms and, God helping me, staunched the flow from your wound. But tell me, Pelleas, who was it stabbed you?" The man smiled at her. "There, I am as ignorant as you," he said. "I woke with a fiery twinge in my side, and saw a man running out of the porch in the dark. I struggled to rise. Blood came into my mouth, and betwixt coughing and hard breathing I must have fainted. What of the others?" Igraine knelt up from stooping over him, and thought. "Morgan and her men," she said presently, "fled across the mere in the barge just after you had been stabbed. I saw them go in the moonlight. It was your cry that woke me in bed. I came and found you senseless in the corner, and the woman and her rascals making off in the boat. One of the men must have smitten you while you slept." Pelleas kept silence for a while, as though he were thinking hard. "Show me the knife," he said anon.