Beatrice, "how strange you are! Would you poison her?
See, dear," (turning to Wonder) "Daddy is only teasing. Let us throw
them away. They are nasty, nasty things. Promise me never to gather
them, won't you, Wonder?"

"Yes, mother. I don't like them. They frighten me."

Antony turned into a by-path with a strange laugh, and was lost to them
in the wood.

CHAPTER VII

THE LOVERS OF SILENCIEUX

Silencieux often spoke to Antony now. Sometimes a sudden, startling word
when he was writing late at night; sometimes long tender talks; once a
terrible whisper. But all this time she never opened her eyes. The
lashes still lay wet upon her cheeks, and when she spoke her lips seemed
hardly to move, only to smile with a deeper meaning, an intenser life.
Indeed, at these times, her face shone with so great a brightness that
Antony's vision was dazzled, and to his gaze she seemed almost
featureless as a star.

Once he had begged to see her eyes.

"You know not what you ask," she had answered. "When you see my eyes you
will die. Some day, Antony, you shall see my eyes. But not yet. You
have much to do for me yet. There is yet much love for you and me before
the end."

"Have all died who saw your eyes, Silencieux?"

"Yes, all died."

"You have had many lovers, Silencieux. Many lovers, and far from here,
and long ago."

"Yes, many lovers, long ago," echoed Silencieux.

"You have been very cruel, Silencieux."

"Yes, very cruel, but very kind. It is true men have died for me. I have
been cruel, yes, but to die for me has seemed better than to live for
any other. And some of my lovers I have never forsaken. When they have
lost all in the world, they have had me. Lonely garrets have seemed
richly furnished because of my face, and men with foodless lips have
died blest because I was near them at the last. Sometimes I have kissed
their lips and died with them, and the world has missed my face for a
hundred unlovely years--for the world is only beautiful when I and my
lovers are in it. Antony, you are one of my lovers, one of my dearest
lovers; be great enough, be all mine, and perhaps I will die with you,
Antony--and leave the world in darkness for your sake, another hundred
years."

"Tell me of your lovers, Silencieux."

"Nearly three thousand years ago I loved a woman of Mitylene, very fair
and made of fire. But she loved another more than I, and for his sake
threw herself from a rock into the sea. As she fell,