Read "Uther and Igraine" by Warwick Deeping online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The woman's face, haloed by the gloom of the casement, still looked out from Tintagel over the solitary grandeur of sea and cliff. Igraine saw ships pass seldom athwart the west, but they brought no hope for her, for she thought herself alone, and served of none. How should Uther the King know that she was mewed in Tintagel at Gorlois's pleasure! Had he not commended her to the calm orchards and cloisters of a nunnery? Even the ring he had given her had been stolen by sheer force. Days came and went, dawn flooded the eastern woods with gold, and evening tossed her torches in the west. To Igraine they were as alike as the gulls that wheeled and winged white over the blue waters.
There are few men of such despicable fibre that they are wholly ruled by the egotism of the flesh. Your complete villain is no frequent prodigy, being more the denizen of the regions of romance than of the common, trafficking, trivial world. There are bad men enough, but few Neros. Give a human being passions, pride, and intense egotism, and his potential energy for evil is unbounded. Virtue is often a mere matter of habit or circumstance. Joseph might have ended otherwise if Potiphar's wife had had more wit; and as for Judas, he was unfortunate in being made banker to a God.