sweet flesh he had loved so tenderly became an
offence to him, as a medium too gross for the embodiment of so beautiful
a face. Such a face as Silencieux's demanded a more celestial porcelain.

Dinner at last finished, he made an excuse to Beatrice for leaving her
alone once more at the end as he had during all the rest of the day,
and hastened to keep his tryst with Silencieux. During dinner the
conscious side of his mind had been luxuriating in the romantic sound of
"until the rising of the moon,"--for he was as yet a long way from being
quite simple even with Silencieux,--and the idea of his going out with
serious eagerness to meet one who, if she was as he knew a living being,
was an image too, delighted his sense of fantastic make-believe.

There is in all love that element of make-believe. Every woman who is
loved is partly the creation of her lover's fancy. He consciously
siderealises her, and with open eyes magnifies her importance to his
life. Antony but made believe and magnified uncommonly--and his dream of
vivifying white plaster was perhaps less desperate than the dreams of
some, that would breathe the breath of life into the colder clay of some
beloved woman, who seems spontaneously to live but is dead all the
while.

Silencieux appeared to be dead, but beneath that eternal smile, as
Beatrice had divined, as Antony was learning, she was only too terribly
alive. Yes! Antony's was the easier dream.

The moon and Antony came up the wood together from opposite ends, and
when Antony entered his chalet Silencieux was already waiting for him,
her head crowned with a moonbeam. He kissed her softly and took her with
him out into the ferns.

CHAPTER V

SILENCIEUX SPEAKS

So long as the moon held, Antony stole up the wood each night to meet
Silencieux--"at the rising of the moon." Sometimes he would lie in a
hollow with her head upon his knee, and gaze for an hour at a time,
entranced, into her face. He would feign to himself that she slept, and
he would hold his breath lest he should awaken her. Sometimes he would
say in a tender whisper, not loud enough for her to hear:--

"It is cold to-night, Silencieux. See, my cloak will keep you warm."

Once as he did this she heaved a gentle sigh, as though thanking him.

At other times he would place her against the gable of the chalet, so
that the moonlight fell upon her, and then he would plunge into the
wood and walk its whole length, so that, as he wo