“I love you, Silencieux.”

“I love you, Antony.”

“You will never leave me lonely in my dream, Silencieux?”

“Never, Antony.”

Oh, how tender sometimes was Silencieux!

Several nights they had the whim that Silencieux should masquerade in the wardrobe of her past.

“To-night, you shall go clothed as when you loved that woman in Mitylene,” Antony would say.

Or:  “To-night you shall be a little shepherd-boy, with a leopard-skin across your shoulder and mountain berries in your hair.”

Or again:  “To-night you shall be Pierrot—­mourning for his Columbine.”

Ah! how divine was Silencieux in all her disguises!—­a divine child.  Oh, how tender those nights was Silencieux!

Antony sat and watched her face in awe and wonder.  Surely it was the noblest face that had ever been seen in the world.

“Is it true that that noble face is mine?” he would ask; “I cannot believe it.”

“Kiss it,” said Silencieux gaily, “and see.”

* * * * *

Then on a sudden, what was this change in Silencieux!  So cold, so silent, so cruel, had she grown.

“Silencieux,” Antony called to her.  “Silencieux,” he pleaded.

But she never spoke.

“O Silencieux, speak!  I cannot bear it.”

Then her lips moved.  “Shall I speak?” she said, with a cruel smile.

“Yes,” he besought her again.

“I shall love you no more in this world.  The lights are gone out, the magic faded.”

“Silencieux!”

But she spoke no more, and, with those lonely words in his ears, Antony came out of his dream and heard the rain falling miserably through the wood.

CHAPTER X

SILENCIEUX WHISPERS

So Antony first knew how cruel could be Silencieux to those who loved her.  Her sudden silences he had grown to understand, even to love.  Always they had been broken again by some wonderful word, which he had known would come sooner or later.  All great natures are full of silence.  Silence is the soil of all passion.  But now it was not silence that was between them, but terrible speech.  As with a knife she had stabbed their love right in its heart.  Yet Antony knew that his love could never die, but only suffer.

During these days he half turned to Beatrice.  How kind was her simple earth-warm affection, after the star-cold transcendentalism in which he had been living!  How full of comfort was her unselfish humanity, after the pitiless egoism of the divine!

And yet, while it momentarily soothed him, he realised, with a heart sad for Beatrice as for himself, that it could never satisfy him again.  For days he left Silencieux alone in the wood, and Beatrice’s face brightened with their renewed companionship; but all the time he seemed to hear Silencieux calling him, and he knew that he would have to go back.