Worshipper of the Image — Chapters XIV-XXIII

When Beatrice returned to the room Wonder was sleeping peacefully again, but at the chill hour when watchers blow out the night-lights, and a dreary greyness comes like a fog through the curtains, Antony and Beatrice fell into each other's arms in anguish, for Wonder was dead.

CHAPTER XIV A SONG OF THE LITTLE DEAD

They carried little Wonder to a green churchyard, a place of kind old trees and tender country bells.

There were few birds to welcome her in the grim November morning, but the grasses stole close and whispered that very soon the thrush and the nightingale would be coming, that the violets were already on their way, and that when May was there she should lie all day in a bed of perfume.

For very dear to Nature's heart are the Little Dead.

The great dead lie imprisoned in escutcheoned vaults, but for the little dead Nature spreads out soft small graves, all snowdrops and dewdrops, where day-long they can feel the earth rocking them as in a cradle, and at night hear the hushed singing of the stars.

Yes, Earth loves nothing so much as her little graves.

There the tiny bodies, like unexhausted censers, pour out all the stored sweetness they had no time to use above the ground, turning the earth they lie in to precious spices.

There the roots of the old yew trees feel about tenderly for the little unguided hands, and sometimes at nightfall the rain bends over them weeping like an inconsolable mother.

It is on the little graves that the sun first rises at morn, and it is there at evening that the moon lays softly her first silver flowers.

There the wren will sometimes bring her sky-blue eggs for a gift, and the summer wind come sowing seeds of magic to take the fancy of the little one beneath.

Sometimes it shakes the hyacinths like a rattle of silver, and spreads the turf above with a litter of coloured toys.

Here the butterflies are born with the first warm breath of the spring.

All the winter they lie hidden in the crevices of the stone, in the carving of little names, and with the first spring day they stand delicately and dry their yellow wings on the little graves.

There are the honeycombs of friendly bees, and the shelters of many a timid earth-born speck of life no bigger than a dewdrop, mysteriously small.

Radiant pin-points of existence have their palaces on the broad blades of the grasses, and in the cellars at their roots works many a humble little slave of the mighty elements.

Yes, the emperors and the ants of Nature's vast economy alike love to be kind to the little graves.

CHAPTER XV SILENCIEUX ALONE IN THE WOOD.

Beatrice's grief for Wonder was such as only a mother can know.

She had but one consolation,--the kind sad eyes of Antony.

She had lost Wonder, but Antony had come back again.

Wonder was not so dead as Antony had seemed a month ago.

When they had left Wonder and were back in the house which was now twice desolate, Antony took Beatrice's hands very tenderly and said:-- "I have been very wrong all these months.

For a shadow I have missed the lovely reality of a little child--and for a shadow, my own faithful wife, I have all this time done you cruel wrong.

But my eyes are open now, I have come out of the evil dream that bound me--and never shall I enter it again.

Let us go from here.

Let us leave this valley and never come back to it any more."

So it was arranged that they should winter far away, returning only to the valley for a few short days in the spring, and then leave it for ever.

They had no heart now for more than just to fly from that haunted place, and before night fell in the valley they were already far away.

In vain Silencieux listened for the sound of her lover's step in the wood, for he had vowed that he would never look upon her face again.

CHAPTER XVI THE FIRST TALK ON THE HILLS

Antony took Beatrice to the high hills where all the year long the sun and the snow shine together.

He was afraid of the sea, for the sea was Silencieux's for ever.

In its depths lay a magic harp which filled all its waves with music--music lovely and accursed, the voice of Silencieux.

That he must never hear again.

He would pile the hills against his ears.

Inland and upland, he and Beatrice should go, ever closer to the kind heart of the land, ever nearer to the forgetful silences of the sky, till huge walls of space were between them and that harp of the sea.

Nor in the whisper of leaves nor in the gloom of forests should the thought of Silencieux beset them.

The earth that held least of her--to that earth they would go; the earth that rose nearest to heaven.

Beauty indeed should be theirs--the Beauty of Nature and Love; no more the vampire's beauty of Art.

It was strange to each how their souls lightened as the valleys of the world folded away behind them, and the simple slopes mounted in their path.

In that pure unladen air which so exhilarated their very bodies, there seemed some mysterious property of exhilaration for the soul also.

One might have dreamed that just to breathe on those heights all one's days would be to grow holy by the more cleansing power of the air.

With such bright currents ever running through the brain, surely one's thoughts would circle there white as stones at the bottom of a spring.

"O Antony," said Beatrice, "why were we so long in finding the hills?"

"We found them once before, Beatrice--do you remember?"

"Yes!

You have not forgotten?"

said Beatrice, with the ray of a lost happiness in her eyes--lost, and yet could it be dawning again?

There was a morning star in Antony's face.

"And then," said Antony, "we went into the valley--the Valley of Beauty and Death."

Beatrice pressed his hand and looked all her love at him for comfort.

He knew how precious was such a forgiveness, the forgiveness of a mother heart broken for the child, which he, directly or indirectly, had sacrificed,--directly as he and Wonder alone knew, indirectly by taking them with him into the Valley of Beauty.

"Ah, Beatrice, your love is almost greater than I can bear.

I am not worthy of it.

I never shall be worthy.

There is something in the love of a woman like you to which the best man is unequal.

We can love--and greatly--but it is not the same."

"We went into the valley," he cried, "and I lost you your little Wonder--" "_Our_ little Wonder," gently corrected Beatrice.

"We found her together, and we lost her together.

Perhaps some day we shall find her together again--" "And do you know, Antony," Beatrice continued, "I sometimes wonder if her little soul was not sent and so taken away all as part of a mission to us, which in its turn is a part of the working out of her own destiny.

For life is very mysterious, Antony--" "Alas!

I had forgotten life," answered Antony with a sigh.

"Yes, dear," Beatrice went on, pursuing her thought.

"I have dared to hope that perhaps Wonder, as she was the symbol of our coming together, was taken away just at this time because we were being drawn apart.

Perhaps it was to save our love that little Wonder died--" Antony looked at Beatrice; half as one looks at a child, and half as one might look at an angel.

"Beatrice," he said tenderly, "you believe in God."

"All women believe in God," answered Beatrice.

"Yes," said Antony musingly, and with no thought of irony, "it is that which makes you women."

CHAPTER XVII ANTONY ALONE ON THE HILLS

But although Beatrice might forgive Antony, from himself came no forgiveness.

He hid his remorse from her, sparing the mother-wound in her heart--but always when he was walking alone he kept saying to himself: "I have lost our little Wonder.

I killed our little Wonder."

One day he climbed up the highest hill within reach, and there leaned into the enormous silence, that he might cry it aloud for God to hear-- God!

--poor little Beatrice, what God was there to hear!

To look at Beatrice one might indeed believe in God--and yet was it not Beatrice who had made God in her own image?

Was not God created of all pure overflows of the human soul, the kind light of human eyes that not all the suffering of the world can exhaust, the idealism of the human spirit that not all the infamies of natural law can dismay?

Nevertheless, Antony confessed himself to God upon the hills, not indeed as one seeking pardon, but punishment.

Yet Heaven's benign untroubled blue carried no cloud upon its face, because one breaking human heart had thus breathed into it its unholy secret.

Around that whole enormous circle such cries and such confessions were being poured like noxious vapours, from a thousand cities; but that incorruptible ether remained unsullied as on the first morning, the black smoke of it all lost in the optimism of God.

On some days he would live over again the scene with Wonder in the wood with unbearable vividness.

"Why, those are only words, silly Daddy!"

--How many times a day did he not hear that quaint little voice making, with a child's profundity, that tremendous criticism upon literature.

He had silenced her with the music of words, as he had silenced his own heart and soul with the same music, but they were still only words none the less.

Ah!

if she were only here to-day, he would bring her something more beautiful than words--or toadstools.

He shuddered as he thought of the loathsome form his decaying fancy had taken, that morning by the Three Black Ponds.

He had filled the small outstretched hands with Nature's filth and poison.

She had asked for flowers, he had brought her toadstools.

Oh, the shame, the crime, the anguish!

But worst of all was to hear himself saying in the silence of his soul, over and over again without any power to still it, as one is forced sometimes to hear the beating of one's heart: "Silencieux, I bring you my little child."

There were times he heard this so plainly when he was with Beatrice that he had to leave her and walk for hours alone.

Only unseen among the hills dare he give vent to the mad despair with which that memory tore him.

Yes, for words--"only words"--he had sacrificed that wonderful living thing, a child.

For words he had missed that magical intercourse, the intercourse with the mind of a child.

How often had she come to him for a story, and he had been dull and preoccupied--with words; how often asked him to take her a walk up the lane, but he had been too busy--with words!

O God, if only she might come and ask again.

Now when she was so far away his fancy teemed with stories.

Every roadside flower had its fairy-tale which cried, "Tell me to little Wonder"--and once he tried to make believe to himself that Wonder was holding his hand, and looking up into his face with her big grave eyes, as he told some child's nonsense to the eternal hills.

He broke off--half in anger with himself.

Was he changing one illusion for another?

"Fool, no one hears you," and he threw himself face down in the grass and sobbed.

But a gentle hand was laid upon his shoulder and Beatrice's voice said,-- "I heard you, Antony--and loved you for it."

So Antony had found the heart of a father when no longer he had a child.

CHAPTER XVIII THE SECOND TALK ON THE HILLS

"But to think," said Antony presently, in answer to Beatrice's soothing hand, "to think that I might have lived with a child--and I chose instead to live with words.

In all the mysterious ways of man, is there anything quite so mysterious as that?

Poor dream-led fool, poor lover of coloured shadows!

"And yet, how proud I was of the madness!

How I loved to say that words were more beautiful than the things for which they stood, and that the names of the world's beautiful women, Sappho, Fiametta, Guinivere, were more beautiful than Sappho, Fiametta, Guinivere themselves; that the names of the stars were lovelier than any star--who has ever found the Pleiades so beautiful as their name, or any king so great as the sound of Orion?

--and what, anywhere in the Universe, is lovely enough to bear Arcturus for its name?

--Ah!

you know how I used to talk--poor fool, poor lover of coloured shadows!"

"Yes, dear," said Beatrice soothingly, "but that is passed now, and you must not dwell too persistently in the sorrow of it, or in your grief for little Wonder.

That too is to dwell with shadows, and to dwell with shadows either of grief or joy is dangerous for the soul."

"I know.

But fear not, Beatrice.

Perhaps there was the danger of my passing from one cloudland to another--for I never knew how I loved our Wonder till now, and I longed, if only by imagination, to follow her where she has gone, and share with her the life together we have lost here--" "But that can never be," said Beatrice; "you must accept it, Antony.

We shall only meet her again by doing that.

The sooner we can say from our hearts 'She is lost here,' the nearer is she to being found in another world.

Yes, Antony dear, even Wonder's little shadow must be left behind, if we are to mount together the hills of life."

"My wonderful Beatrice!

Yes, the hills of life.

No more its woods, but its hills, bathed in a vast and open sunshine.

Look around us--how nobly simple is every line and shape!

Far below the horizon nature is elaborate, full of fancies,--mazy watercourses, delicate dingles, fantastically gloomy ravines, misshapen woods, gibbering with diablerie;

but here how simple, how great, how good she is!

There is not a shape subtler than a common bowl, and the colours are alphabetical--and yet, by what taking of thought could she have achieved an effect so grand, at once so beautiful and so holy?"

"Yes, one might call it the good beauty," said Beatrice.

"Yes," continued Antony, perhaps somewhat ominously interested in the subject, "that is a great mystery--the seeming moral meaning of the forms of things.

Some shapes, however beautiful, suggest evil; others, however ugly, suggest good.

As we look at a snake, or a spider, we know that evil is shaped like that; and not only animate things but inanimate.

Some aspects of nature are essentially evil.

There are landscapes that injure the soul to look at, there are sunsets that are unholy, there are trees breathing spiritual pestilence as surely as some men breathe it--" "Do you remember," continued Antony with a smile, which died as he realised he was committed to an allusion best forgotten, "that old twisted tree that stood on the moor near our wood?

I often wonder what mysterious sin he had committed--" "Yes," laughed Beatrice, "he looked a terribly depraved old tree, I must admit--but don't you think that when we have arrived at the discussion of the mysterious sins of trees it is time to start home?"

"Yes, indeed," said Antony gaily, "let us change the subject to the vices of flowers."

From which conversation it will be seen that Antony's mind was still revolving with unconscious attraction around the mystery of Art.

Was it some far-travelled sea-wind bringing faint strains from that sunken harp, strains too subtle for the ear, and even unrecognised by the mind?

CHAPTER XIX LAST TALK ON THE HILLS

Beatrice's prayer had been answered.

Antony had come back to her.

She was necessary to him once more.

The old look was in his eyes, the old sound in his voice.

One day as they were out together she was so conscious of this happiness returned that she could not forbear speaking of it--with an inner feeling that it was better to be happy in silence.

What is that instinct in us which tells us that we risk our happiness in speaking of it?

Happiness is such a frightened thing that it flies at the sound of its own name.

And yet of what shall we speak if not our happiness?

Of our sorrows we can keep silence, but our joys we long to utter.

So Beatrice spoke of her great happiness to Antony, and told him too of her old great unhappiness and her longing for death.

"What a strange and terrible dream it has been--but thank God, we are out in the daylight at last," said Antony.

"O my little Beatrice, to think that I could have forsaken you like that!

Surely if you had come and taken me by the hands and looked deep into my eyes, and called me out of the dream, I must have awakened, for, cruel as it was, the dream was but part of a greater dream, the dream of my love for you--" "But I understand it all now," he continued, "see it all.

Do you remember saying that perhaps I had never loved anything but images all my life?

It was quite true.

Since I can remember, when I thought I loved something I was sure to find sooner or later that I loved less the object itself than what I could say about it, and when I had said something beautiful, something I could remember and say over and over to myself, I cared little if the object were removed.

The spiritual essence of it seemed to have passed over into my words, and I loved the reincarnation best.

Only at last have I awakened to realities, and the shadows flee away.

The worshipper of the Image is dead within me.

But alas!

that little Wonder had to die first--" "I used to tell myself," he went on, "that human life, however exquisite, without art to eternalise it, was like a rose showering its petals upon the ground.

For so brief a space the rose stood perfect, then fell in a ruin of perfume.

Wonderful moments had human life, but without art were they not like pearls falling into a gulf?

So I said: there is nothing real but art.

The material of art passes--human love, human beauty--but art remains.

It is the image, not the reality, that is everlasting.

I will live in the image."

"But I know now," he once more resumed, "that there is a higher immortality than art's,--the immortality of love.

The immortality of art indeed is one of those curious illusions of man's self-love which a moment's thought dispels.

Art, who need be told, is as dependent for its survival on the survival of its physical media as man's body itself--and though the epic and the great canvas escape combustion for a million years, they must burn at last, burn with all the other accumulated shadows of time.

What we call immortality in art is but the shadow of the soul's immortality; but the immortality of love is that of the soul itself--" "O Antony," interrupted Beatrice, "you really believe that now?

You will never doubt it again?"

"We never doubt what we have really seen, and I had never seen before," answered Antony, taking her hand and looking deep into her eyes, "never seen it as I see it now."

"And you will never doubt it again?"

"Never."

"Whatever that voice should say to you?"

"I shall never hear that voice again."

"O Antony, is it really true?

You have come back to me.

I can hardly believe it."

"Listen, Beatrice; when we return to the Valley, return only to leave it for ever, I will take the Image and smash it in a hundred pieces--for I hate it now as much as I once loved it.

Fear not; it will never trouble our peace again."

The mention of the valley was a momentary cloud on Beatrice's happiness, but as she looked into Antony's resolute love-lit face, it melted away.

CHAPTER XX ANTONY'S JUDGMENT UPON SILENCIEUX

So the weeks and months went by for those two upon the hills, and the soul of Antony grew stronger day by day, and his love with it--and the face of Beatrice was like a bird singing.

At last the spring came, and the snow was no more needed to keep warm the flowers.

With the flowers came the snowdrop-soul of Wonder, and the thoughts of mother and father turned to the place of kind old trees and tender country bells, where in the unflowering November they had laid her.

These dark months the chemic earth had been busy with the little body they loved, and by this time Wonder would be many violets.

"Let us go to Wonder," they said; "she is awake now."

So they went to Wonder, and found her surrounded, in her earth cradle, by a great singing of birds, and blossoms and green leaves innumerable.

It was more like a palace than a graveyard, and they went away happy for their little one.

There remained now to take leave of the valley, which indeed looked its loveliest, as though to allure them to remain.

Some days they must stay to make the necessary preparations for their departure.

Among these, in Antony's mind, the first and most necessary was that destruction of Silencieux which he had promised himself and his wife upon the hills.

The first afternoon Beatrice noted him take a great hammer, and set out up the wood.

She gave him a look of love and trust as he went--though there was a secret tremor in her heart, for she knew, perhaps better than he, how strong was the power of Silencieux.

But in Antony's heart was no misgiving, or backsliding.

In those months on the hills he had realised human love, in the love of a true and tender and fairy-like woman, and he knew that no illusions, however specious, were worth that reality--a reality with all the magic of an illusion.

He gripped the hammer in his hand joyfully, eager to smite featureless the face which had so misled him, brought such tragic sorrow to those he had loved.

Still, for all his unshaken purpose, it was strange to see again the face that had meant so much to him, around which his thoughts had circled consciously or unconsciously all these absent weeks.

Seldom has a face seen again after long separation seemed so disenchanted as Silencieux's. Was this she whom he had worshipped, she who had told him in that strange voice of her immortal lovers, she with whom he had sung by the sea, she with whom he had danced those strange dances in the town, she who had whispered low that awful command, she to whom he had sacrificed his little child?

She was just a dusty, neglected cast--nothing more.

Wonder's voice came back to him: "No, Daddy, they tasted of dust"--and at that thought he gripped the hammer ready to strike.

And yet, even thus, she was a beautiful work of man's hands, and Antony, hating to destroy beauty, still forbore to strike--just as he would have shrunk from breaking in pieces a shapely vase.

Then, too, the resemblance to Beatrice took him again.

Crudely to smash features so like hers seemed a sort of mimic murder.

So he still hesitated.

Was there no other way?

Then the thought came to him: "Bury her."

It pleased him.

Yes, he would bury her.

So, having found a spade, he took her from the wall, and looked from his door into the wood, pondering where her grave should be.

A whitebeam at a little distance made a vivid conflagration of green amid the sombre boles of the pines.

Pinewoods rely on their undergrowth--bracken and whortleberry and occasional bushes--for their spring illuminations, and the whitebeam shone as bright in that wood as a lamp in the dark.

"I will bury her beneath the whitebeam," said Antony, and he carried her thither.

Soon the grave was dug amid the pushing fronds of the young ferns, and taking one long look at her, Antony laid her in the earth, and covered her up from sight.

Was it only fancy that as he turned away a faint music seemed to arise from the ground, forming into the word "Resurgam" as it died away?

"It is done," said Antony to Beatrice.

"But I could not break her, she looked so like you; so I buried her in the wood."

Beatrice kissed him gratefully.

But her heart would have been more satisfied had Silencieux been broken.

CHAPTER XXI

"RESURGAM!"

"Resurgam!"

Had his senses deceived him?

They must have deceived him.

And yet that music at least had seemed startlingly near, sudden, and sweet, as though one should tread upon a harp in the grass.

For the next day or two Antony could not get it out of his ears, and often, like a sweet wail through the wood, he seemed to hear the word "Resurgam."

Was Silencieux a living spirit, after all,--no mere illusion, but one of those beautiful demons of evil that do possess the souls of men?

He went and stood by Silencieux's grave.

It was just as he had left it.

Only an early yellow butterfly stood fanning itself on the freshly turned earth.

Was it the soul of Silencieux?

Cursing himself for a madman, he turned away, but had not gone many yards, when once more--there was that sudden strain of music and the word "Resurgam" somewhere on the wind.

This time he knew he was not mistaken, but to believe it true--O God, he must not believe it true.

Reality or fancy, it was an evil thing which he had cast out of his life--and he closed his ears and fled.

Yet, though he loyally strove to quench that music in the sound of Beatrice's voice, deep in his heart he knew that the night would come when he would take his lantern and spade, wearily, as one who at length after hopeless striving obeys once more some imperious weakness--and look on the face of Silencieux again.

Too surely that night came, and, as in a dream, Antony found himself in the dark spring night hastening with lantern and spade to Silencieux's grave.

It was only just to look on her face again, to see if she really lived like a vampire in the earth; and were she to be alive, he vowed to kill her where she lay--for into his life again he knew she must not come.

As he neared the whitebeam, a gust of wind blew out his lantern, and he stood in the profound darkness of the trees.

While he attempted to relight it, he thought he saw a faint light at the foot of the whitebeam, as of a radiance welling out of the earth; but he dismissed it as fancy.

Then, having relit the lantern, he set the spade into the ground, and speedily removed the soil from the white face below.

As he uncovered it, the wind again extinguished the lantern, and there, to his amazement and terror, was the face of Silencieux shining radiantly in the darkness.

The hole in which she lay brimmed over with light, as a spring wells out of the hillside.

Her face was almost transparent with brightness, and presently she spoke low, with a voice sweeter than Antony had ever heard before.

It was the voice of that magic harp at the bottom of the sea, it was the voice that had told him of her lovers, the voice of hidden music that had cried "Resurgam" through the wood.

"Antony," she said, "sing me songs of little Wonder."

And, forgetting all but the magic of her voice, the ecstasy of being hers again, Antony carried her with him to the châlet, and setting her in her accustomed place, gazed at her with his whole soul.

"Sing me songs of little Wonder," she repeated.

"You bid me sing of little Wonder!"

cried Antony, half in terror of this beautiful evil face that drew him irresistibly as the moon, "you, who took her from me!"

"Who but I should bid you sing of Wonder?"

answered Silencieux.

"I loved her.

That was why I took her from you, that by your grief she should live for ever.

There is no one but I who can give you back your little Wonder--no one but I who can give you back anything you have lost.

If you love me faithfully, Antony--there is nothing you can lose but in me you will find it again."

Antony bowed his head, his heart breaking for Beatrice--but who is not powerless against his own soul?

"Listen," said Silencieux again.

"Once on a time there was a beautiful girl who died, and from her grave grew a wonderful flower, which all the world came to see.

'Yet it seems a pity,' said one, 'that so beautiful a girl should have died.'

'Ah,' said a poet standing by, 'there was no other way of making the flower!'

" And again, as Antony still kept silence in his agony, Silencieux said, "Listen."

"Listen, Antony.

You have hidden yourself away from me, you have put seas and lands between us, you have denied me with bitter curses, you have vowed to thrust me from your life, you have given your allegiance to the warm and pretty humanity of a day, and reviled the august cold marble of immortality.

But it is all in vain.

In your heart of hearts you love no human thing, you love not even yourself, you love only the eternal spirit of beauty in all things, you love only me.

Me you may sacrifice, your own heart you may deny, in the weakness of human pity for human love; but, should this be, your life will be in secret broken, purposeless, and haunted, and to me at last you will come, at the end--at the end and too late.

This is your own heart's voice; you know if it be true."

"It is true," moaned Antony.

"Many men and many loves are there in this world," continued Silencieux, "and each knows the way of his own love, nor shall anything turn him from it in the end.

Here he may go and thither he may turn, but in the end there is only one way of joy for each, and in that way must he go or perish.

Many faces are fair upon the earth, but for each man is a face fairest of all, for which, unless he win it, each must go desolate forever--" "Face of Eternal Beauty," said Antony, "there is but one face for me for ever.

It is yours."

* * * * * On the morrow Beatrice saw once more that light in Antony's face which made her afraid.

He had brought with him some sheets of paper on which were written the songs of little Wonder Silencieux had bidden him sing.

They were songs of grief so poignant and beautiful one grew happy in listening to them, and Antony forgot all in the joy of having made them.

He read them to Beatrice in an ecstasy.

Her face grew sadder and sadder as he read.

When he had finished she said:-- "Antony!

--Silencieux has risen again."

"O Beatrice, Beatrice--I would do anything in the world for you--but I cannot live without her."

CHAPTER XXII THE STRANGENESS OF ANTONY

From this moment Silencieux took possession of Antony as she had never taken it before.

Never had he been so inaccessibly withdrawn into his fatal dream.

Beatrice forgot her own bitter sorrow in her fear for him, so wrought was he with the fires that consumed him.

Some days she almost feared for his reason, and she longed to watch over him, but his old irritation at her presence had returned.

As the summer days came on, she would see him disappear through the green door of the wood at morning and return by it at evening; but all the day each had been alone, Beatrice alone with a solitude in which was now no longer any Wonder.

The summer beauty gave her courage, but she knew that the end could not be very far away.

One day there had been that in Antony's manner which had more than usually alarmed her, and when night fell and he had not returned, she went up the wood in search of him, her heart full of forebodings.

As she neared the châlet she seemed to hear voices.

No!

there was only one voice.

Antony was talking to some one.

Careful to make no noise, she stole up to the window and looked in.

The sight that met her eyes filled her with a great dread.

"O God, he is going mad," she cried to herself.

Antony was sitting in a big chair drawn up to the fire.

Opposite to him, lying back in her cushions, was the Image draped in a large black velvet cloak.

A table stood between them, and on it stood two glasses, and a decanter nearly empty of wine, Silencieux's glass stood untasted, but Antony had evidently been drinking deeply, for his cheeks were flushed and his eyes wild.

He was speaking in angry, passionate, despairing tones.