Igraine gave him no more leisure to moralise on such trifles. She sprang down to the cushiony turf, and took his horse by the bridle.
"I will be master again for once, Pelleas," she said, "since, well of your wound, you have played the tyrant. At least you shall obey me to-night."
Pelleas, half in a stupor, gave up fighting his own heart for a while, and fell in with Igraine's humour. She was strangely full of smiles and quiet glances; her eyes would meet his, flash, thrill him, and then evade his soul with sudden mischief. She tethered his horse for him, and then, making him sit down under a tree, she began to unarm him, kneeling confidently by his side. Her fingers lingered over-long on the buckles. When she lifted off his helmet, her hands touched his face and forehead, and set him blushing like a boy. The very nearness of her--her breath, her dress, her lips and eyes so near to his--made him like so much wax--passive, obedient, yet red as fire.
When she had ended her task, she gave him his naked sword and her orders.
"Now you may cut me hazels for a bower, Pelleas," she said. "I will have it here under this tree where the moss is soft and dry. This summer night one could sleep under the stars and never feel the dew."
Pelleas rose up and did her bidding. The green boughs were ready to his great sword, as it gleamed and glimmered in the wizard light. He cut two forked stakes, and set them upright in the ground, with a pole between them. Then he built up branches about this centrepiece till the whole was roofed and walled with shelving green; he spread his red cloak therein for a carpet. Igraine sat and watched his labour. Life seemed to have rushed nearly to its zenith, and her thoughts were soaring in regions of gold.
The black moth night had come into the sky with his golden-spotted wings all spread. It was time for idyllic love, pure looks, and the touch of hands. The billowy bosoms of the trees rolled sombrously above, and the little pool was like a wizard's glass, black and deep with sheeny mysteries.
Igraine beckoned Pelleas to a seat on the grass bank at her feet when he had finished. There was a light on her face that the man had not seen before, a kind of quiet rapture, a veil of exultation, as though her maidenhood were flowering gold under a net of pinkest satin. She had loosened her hair in straight streams upon her shoulders, and her habit lay open to the very base of her shapely throat. She sat there and looked at him, with hands clasped in her lap, and her grey gown rising and falling markedly as she breathed. It seemed to Pelleas that there was nothing in the whole universe save twilight, two eyes, a stirring bosom, and two wistful lips.