This is the first composition in which Robinson moved towards the Arthurian themes exploited by Rossetti in his watercolours of the same period. He chose a scene from the recently published Tennyson epic, 'Idylls of the King' - a poem for which Mrs. Cameron was to provide illustrations some fifteen years ago. Tennyson was particularly admired by the Pre-Raphaelites for his ability to invest minutely observed details with a mournful symbolic power. Elaine gazes 'in fantasy' on the shield of the hero, Lancelot. In striving to convey the girl's feelings, Robinson seems hamstrung by the literalness of his camera's vision. In her Arthurian composition, Mrs Cameron was to realise (as Rossetti knew too) that 'Ruskinian' cripness of delineation could be fatal to a mood of intense reverie.