Flowers were poured in upon her, worked into posies, garlands, shields, harps, crosses,--all bearing with them some mute plea for mercy. It might have been perpetual May-day in Radamanth's house, so flowered and scented was it. Flowers were followed by things more tangible, a pearl-set cithern, a great white hound, a gold girdle, a pair of doves in a cage of silver wire, a necklet of rich stones gotten from some Byzant mart. Gorlois seemed ready to send her all the finery in Winchester despite her messages and her words to him,--"My lord, I can suffer none of these things from you." Servants and slaves came down to Radamanth's house as though they had been sent from Sheba, while one of Radamanth's men went back from Igraine like an echo, bearing back the unaccepted baubles. It was a patient game, and rather foolish. These were but small flutters in Gorlois's sweep for the sun. Had not Igraine been stabbed in the public gardens! Gorlois put the incident to use. He formed a bodyguard of certain of the noble youths who were under his patronage, and warned Igraine with all reverence that he had acted for her sanctity, and that a dozen gentlemen would follow near her when she walked abroad, or went to bath or church. Even her humblest stroll in the street began to partake of the nature of a triumphal progress. Children would gather to her in the gardens and throw flowers and laurel branches at her feet, or she would be followed by music and some sweet love ditty to the harp. A hundred quaint flatterers seemed to dog her from door to door, till she hardly dared to stir out of Radamanth's garden. Naturally enough, her name was soon the one name in Winchester. The good folk with their Celtic beauty-loving souls spoke of her with quaint extravagance; her skin was like the apple-bloom in spring, and her lips like rich red May; her feet moved soft and swift as sunlight through swaying branches; her hair was a cloud of gold plucked from the sky at dawn. She was gaped at and pointed at in the street like a prodigy. When she went into church on Sunday half the folk turned to stare at her, and a clear circle was left about her where she sat in the nave. She was for the season the city's cynosure, its poem, its gossip. Aphrodite might have stepped out of mythology and taken lodging at Radamanth's, to judge by the curiosity displayed by the people, and doubtless many a comfortable piece of business came to Radamanth thereby.