f a wood.

How strangely she smiled, the smile almost of one taking possession.

No wonder Beatrice had been frightened. Was there some mysterious life
in the thing, after all? Why should these indefinite forebodings come
over him as he looked at her!--But he was growing as childish as
Beatrice. Surely midnight, a dark wood, a lantern, and a death-mask,
with two owls whistling to each other across the valley, were enough to
account for any number of forebodings! But Antony shivered, for all
that, as he locked the door and hastened back again down the wood.

CHAPTER III

THE NORTHERN SPHINX

Antony had not written a poem to his wife since their little girl Wonder
had been born, now some four years ago. Surely it was from no lack of
love, this silence, but merely due to the working of what would seem to
be a law of the artistic temperament: that to turn a muse into a wife,
however long and faithfully loved, is to bid good-bye to the muse. But a
day or two after the coming of Silencieux, Antony found himself suddenly
inspired once more to sing of his wife. It was the best poem he had
written for a long time, and when it was finished, he came down the wood
impatient to read it to Beatrice. This was the poem, which he called
"The Northern Sphinx":--

Sphinx of the North, with subtler smile
Than hers who in the yellow South,
With make-believe mysterious mouth,
Deepens the _ennui_ of the Nile;

And, with no secret left to tell,
A worn and withered old coquette,
Dreams sadly that she draws us yet,
With antiquated charm and spell:

Tell me your secret, Sphinx,--for mine!--
What means the colour of your eyes,
Half innocent and all so wise,
Blue as the smoke whose wavering line

Curls upward from the sacred pyre
Of sacrifice or holy death,
Pale twisting wreaths of opal breath,
From fire mounting into fire.

What is the meaning of your hair?
That little fairy palace wrought
With many a grave fantastic thought;
I send a kiss to wander there,

To climb from golden stair to stair,
Wind in and out its cunning bowers,--
O garden gold with golden flowers,
O little palace built of hair!

The meaning of your mouth, who knows?
O mouth, where many meanings meet--
Death kissed it stern, Love kissed it sweet,
And each has shaped its mystic rose.

Mouth of all sweets, whose sweetness sips
Its tribute honey from all hives,