Warwick Deeping

“ Pearly white with an aureole of foam, she swam flankwise with an overhand stroke, one arm thrusting out like a silver sickle. Here and there, fretted by the willows, long moonbeams glinted on her round whiteness, as the maddened foam bubbled, and the water sighed and yearned amid the sedges. A fine glow had leapt through her body like wine, and the mere seemed to sway and sing as she swam for the main bank, where the willows stood blackly in a mist of phosphor glory. Soon she reached the shallows at a pleasant place where stretch of grassland tongued down into the mere. ”

“ Why, Pelleas, hundreds of good knights have lost life for a mere matter of love; why trouble for the life of a wretch who perhaps never knew what truth meant. You would not grieve for men slain in battle. ”

“ Music is broken by the laugh of the fool, nor can youth forget the crabbed noisomeness of age. Women sing and pass. A man marries one night and is tombed the next. And love, what of love? I tell you love lives only in the eyes of woe. ”

“ So he came to the island, and all greenness seemed to wither before him, and with the fear of him I awoke."
Igraine shook her head at the man.
"Your dreams are distraught," she said; "it is your wound, Pelleas. In faith we should need the great Merlin for such a vision."
"Ah," said he, "I can read you the riddle, Igraine. Our barge lies by, the land bank ready for any foe. That is where the dream touches us."
Igraine brought him a bowl of crushed bread and fruit, and made as though to feed him.
"Never worry," she said; "the barge is moored safe at the stage." ”

“ From legal quarters came that inevitable pedagogue blear-eyed Verity, paunched up with dogma and breathing ethical platitudes like garlic. "The woman's a nun," quoth Dom Verity, with a sneer. "Keep your fancy in leash, my good Pelleas, and forswear romance. Bar your thoughts from a child of the church or you will rue it. No man may serve a nun. The world has said." ”