he magic faded? Oh, speak--tell me--anything--only speak!" But
still Silencieux neither spoke nor smiled.

"Listen, Silencieux," at last cried Antony, beside himself, "unless you
answer me, I will die this night, and my blood shall be upon your cruel
altar for ever."

As he spoke he snatched a dagger from among some bibelots on his mantel,
and drew it from its sheath.

"You are proud of your martyrs," he laughed; "see, I will bleed to death
for your sake. In God's name speak."

But Silencieux spoke nothing at all.

Then Beatrice, watching in terror, seeing by his face that he would
really kill himself, ran round to the door and broke in, crying, "O my
poor Antony!" but already he had plunged the dagger amid the veins of
his left wrist, and was watching the blood gush out with a strange
delight.

As Beatrice burst in, he looked up at her, and mistook her for
Silencieux.

"Ah!" he said, "you speak at last. You love me now, when it is too
late--when I am dying."

As he said this his face grew white and he fainted away.

For many days Antony lay unconscious, racked by terrible delirium. The
doctor called it brain fever. It was not the common form, he said, but a
more dangerous form, to which only imaginative men were subject. It was
a form of madness all the more malignant because the sufferer, and
particularly his friends, might go for years without suspecting it. The
doctor gave the disease no name.

During his illness Antony spoke to Beatrice all the time as Silencieux,
but one day, when he was nearly well again, he suddenly turned upon her
in enraged disappointment, with a curious harshness he had never shown
before, as though the gentleness of his soul had died during his
illness, and exclaimed:--"Why, you are not Silencieux, after all!"

"I am Beatrice," said his wife gently; "Beatrice, who loves you with her
whole heart."

"But I love Silencieux--"

Beatrice hid her face and sobbed.

"Where is Silencieux? Bring me Silencieux. I see! You have taken her
away while I was ill--I will go and seek her myself," and he attempted
to rise.

"You are too weak. You must not get up, Antony. I will bring you
Silencieux."

And so, till he was well enough to leave his bed, Silencieux hung facing
Antony on his bedroom wall, and on his first walk out into the air, he
took her with him and set her once more in her old shrine in the wood.

Now, by this time, the heart of Beatrice was broken.

CHAPTER XXIII