They were left alone together on the terrace, Radamanth shepherding his merchant friends aside for the moment with the discreet desire to please the count. Gorlois stood by the stairhead and told Igraine the reason of his coming, as though she had not guessed it from the moment his barge had foamed up beside the steps. He told her frankly that he wished to speak to her alone, and that his barge gave her an opportunity of hearing him without his having the advantage of her in solitude, while the noise of oars would drown their words. Igraine listened to him with a solemn face. She began to feel that she must face her destiny and give the man the truth for good. Procrastination would avail nothing against such a man as Gorlois. Being so minded, she gave Gorlois her hand and hardened herself to satisfy him that day. Away went the great barge before the strong sweep of the long oars. Igraine watched the water slide by--foaming like a mill race as the blades cut white furrows in the tide. The river gleamed with colour as innumerable galleys, skiffs, and coracles drifted in the shallows or darted aside to give passage to Gorlois's barge. Fair stone houses, gardened round with green, slid back on either side. They passed the spectacular galleys one by one, and the wooden wharfs packed with the mean folk of the city, and foaming on under the great water-gate, drew southward into the open country and the fields. Igraine looked at Gorlois, and found his face impenetrable with thought. A fillet of gold bound his hair, and he was wearing his great sword, and an enamelled belt over his rich tunic. The cushions of the barge had been sprinkled with perfumes, and the floor covered ankle deep with flowers. Igraine groaned in spirit, and read the old extravagance that had persecuted her so long, and made a mockery of her love for Pelleas. Gentle meads lapped greenly to the willows, giving place anon to woods that seemed to stride down and snatch the river for a silver girdle. The festival folk and their skiffs were out of sight and hearing, yet Gorlois's barge ran on, to plunge into emerald shadows, tunnels whose floors seemed of the blackest crystal webbed with nets of green and blue, whose vaultings were the dense groinings of the trees. Not a wind stirred. The great curving galleries in the woods were dark and mysterious, the water like glistening basalt, the trees dreaming over their own images in an ecstasy of silence. The foam from the oars was very white, and the moist swish of the blades made the silence more solemn by contrast, while the water seemed to catch a golden flicker from the flanks of the barge.