“He was waiting there for her beside the pool - a great black horse with shoulders like polished ebony and the water still streaming from his mane and tail. Morag stood and looked at him for a long moment. The great horse looked at her and never moved.“Will you trust me?” he had asked her the evening before, and she had trusted him then. She trusted him now, and so she walked towards him. She grasped his mane, and still the black horse never moved. She stood on a stone beside him, swung herself onto his back, and the black horse moved.”

“In the inner dark she saw a handsome bay horse with his clean earspricked like daggers from his naked head as he swung handsomely roundto stare at the open doorway. He had big, black, brilliant eyes, with asharp questioning glint, and that air of tense, alert quietness which betraysan animal that can be dangerous... He was of such a lovely red-goldcolour, and a dark, invisible fire seemed to come out of him .. .She looked at the glowing bay horse, that stood there with his ears back,his face averted, but attending as if he were some lightning conductor. Hewas a stallion . ..Dimly, in her weary young-woman's soul, an ancient understandingseemed to flood in . . . For some reason the sight of him, his power, his alive,alert intensity, his unyieldingness, made her want to cry. She never didcry ... But now, as if that mysterious fire of the horse's body had split somerock in her, she went home and hid herself in her room, and just cried. Thewild, brilliant, alert head of St Mawr seemed to look at her out of anotherworld. It was as if she had had a vision, as if the walls of her own world hadsuddenly melted away, leaving her in a great darkness, in the midst of whichthe large, brilliant eyes of that horse looked at her with demonish question,while his naked ears stood up like daggers from the naked lines of hisinhuman head, and his great body glowed red with power.What was it? Almost like a god looking at her terribly out of theeverlasting dark, she had felt the eyes of that horse; great, glowing,fearsome eyes, arched with a question, and containing a white blade oflight like a threat. What was his non-human question, and his uncannythreat? She didn't know. He was some splendid demon, and she mustworship him. (St Mawr)”

“Black would trust her with his secrets. He would protect hers. But did she trust him with her heart? Could she?She thought of Wendell, and no longer felt any remorse for her feelings. She did not love him. Her heart had been taken two years ago, by a stranger she thought she had conjured up in the atmosphere of her imagination.He had asked her to trust him—and there was only one way she knew how. She reached into the wardrobe and pulled out the crimson gown.No regrets. No seduction. No scandal. Only love.”

“With his back to us, Sean tugs the halter from the mare's head. She kicks out, but he steps out of the way as if it were nothing at all. With a shake of her mane, she leaps mightily into the water. For a moment she struggles over the waves, and then she is swimming. Just a wild black horse in a deep blue sea full of the ashes of other dead boys.”

“Everything went black in the shocking folds of his embrace. She was very startled and near to sobbing.'Caw, caw,' echoed his raincoat.'Don't be frightened,' he said. 'It is only poor Finn, who will do you no harm.'She recovered herself a little, though she was still trembling. She could see her own face reflected in little in the black pupils of his subaqueous eyes. She still looked the same. She saluted herself. He was only a little taller than she and their eyes were almost level. Remotely, she wished him three inches taller. Or four. She felt the warm breath from his wild beast's mouth softly, against her cheek. She did not move. Stiff, wooden, and unresponsive, she stood in his arms and watched herself in his eyes. It was a comfort to see herself as she thought she looked.'Oh, get it over with, get it over with,' she urged furiously under her breath.He was grinning like Pan in a wood. He kissed her, closing his eyes so that she could not see herself any more. His lips were wet and rough, cracked. It might have been anybody, kissing her, and besides, she did not know him well, if at all. She wondered why he was doing this, putting his mouth on her own undesiring one, softly moving his body against her. What was the need? She felt a long way away from him, and superior, also.”

“How dare Arion sit there and tell her he cared for her more than she for him when she was in love with him! Was the man dense? Had he fallen from his horse too many times?”