Lancelot sets his own blade aside and sighs, putting his head in his hands for a moment. He has yet to do a decent job explaining this, and he knows it; that he has tried to set it right with Galahad, apologized, that he and Galahad have come to an understanding seems to mean nothing to anyone but the two of them.

When he sits up again he looks a little defeated, prepared in advance to lose Laertes' friendship. He keeps his gaze down. "When I arrived here, Galahad was the first person I saw. I did not know him, though he knew me. When I left court he could not yet have been born. He spoke to me-- he knew my baptismal name, and said it was his own. He called himself my son. I could not believe this. I had no reason to believe this to be true. He--" Lancelot pauses; he still doesn't want to speak of this, but it's not as if there's no one else who knows, including Sagramore. When he begins again he says carefully, "He spoke to me of his mother. He knew things that... I thought none but myself and those closest to me knew. It pained me. I knew not whether he was a trial, a test-- I had been out questing and woke and wandered here. Stranger things have happened. I denied him. I declared that what he said was not so. Could not be so. When he insisted, I-- I lost my temper. It happens to me, sometimes, that everything goes and I've nothing but rage and action. I struck him."