Warwick Deeping

“ His eyes seemed to grow large, like the eyes of an angry dog. Never had folk seen him look so black. He stared up a moment at Igraine, shook his spear, and trampling the green sleeve under the hoofs of his horse, rode away without a word through the glum and gaping crowd.
Igraine had thrown down the glove with a vengeance. It was a mad enough method of beating off the pride of a man such as Gorlois whose temper grew with the blows given, and who knew no moderation in love or in hate. ”

“ Many men never show their true fibre till they are given the blunt lie, and Gorlois was never more himself than when baffled. There was much of the hawk about him, and Igraine had underrated his pride if she expected it to take league with her against its kinsman passion. Her measure only uncovered the darker side of the man's nature, and sounded the doom of a lighter, gayer chivalry. Gorlois's pride and self-love never dragged in the wind, but held him taut to the storm, as though determined to weather all the perversities of which a woman's heart is capable. ”

“ The fabric of a mere nice romance had stiffened into sterner, darker proportions. There was the look of a dry desire in the man's eyes, a lean hungry silence about him that made his men whisper. Some of them had seen Gorlois when he hunted down the heathen. They knew his temper, and the cast of his features when there was some lust of enterprise in his heart.
About that time a knight came from Wales thrusting a woman's beauty upon every man with the point of his spear. ”