The Worshipper of the Image | Page 9

reality; gained by force of a contrast
which accentuated while it limited her, lost by opposition to the great
faces of earth and sky. Her life, so concentrated, so self-absorbed,
seemed more of an essence, potently distilled, compared with this
abounding ichor of existence, that audibly sang in brimming circulation

through the veins of this carelessly immortal earth.
For some moments of self-conscious thought she shrank into a
symbol,--a symbol of but one of the elements of the mighty world. Yet
to this element did not all the others, more brutal in force, more
extended in space, conspire?
So in some hours will the most mortal maid of warmest flesh and blood
become an abstraction to her lover--sometimes shrink to the
significance of one more flower, and sometimes expand to the
significance of a microcosm, a firmament in mystical miniature.
Thus in like manner for Antony did Silencieux alternate between reality
and dream that afternoon, though all the time he knew that, however
now and again the daylight seemed to create an illusion of her
remoteness, she was still his, and he of all men her chosen lover.
Suddenly as they sat there together, silent and immovable, Antony
caught the peer of two bright little eyes fixed on the white face of
Silencieux. A tiny wedge-shaped head, with dashes of white across the
brows, reared itself out of a crevice in the bank. A forked tongue came
and went like black lightning through its eager little lips, and a
handsomely marked adder began to glide, like molten metal, along the
bank to Silencieux. The brilliant whiteness of the image had fascinated
the little creature. Antony kept very still. Darting its head from side to
side, venomously alert against the smallest sound, the adder reached
Silencieux. Then to Antony's delight it coiled itself round the white
throat, still restlessly moving its head wonderingly beneath the chin.
With a grace to which all movement from the beginning of time
seemed to have led up, it clasped Silencieux's neck and softly reared its
lips to hers. Its black tongue darted to and fro along that strange smile.
"He has kissed her!" Antony exclaimed, and in an instant the adder was
nothing more than a terrified rustle in the brushwood.
He took Silencieux into his hands. There was poison on her lips. For
another moment his fancy made him self-conscious, and turned
Silencieux again into a symbol,--though it was but for a moment.

"There is always poison on the lips of Art," he said to himself.
CHAPTER IX
THE WONDERFUL WEEK.
As Antony and Silencieux became more and more to each other, poor
Beatrice, though she had been the first occasion of their love, and little
as she now demanded, seldom as Antony spoke to her, seldom as he
smiled upon her, distant as were the lonely walks she took, infrequent
as was her sad footfall in the little wood,--poor Beatrice, though indeed,
so far from active intrusion upon their loves, and as if only by her
breathing with them the heavy air of that green unwholesome valley,
was becoming an irksome presence of the imagination. They longed to
be somewhere together where Beatrice had never been, where her sad
face could not follow them; and one night Silencieux whispered to
Antony:--
"Take me to the sea, Antony--to some lonely sea."
"To-morrow I will take you," said Antony, "where the loneliest land
meets the loneliest sea."
On the morrow evening the High Muses had once more made Antony
late for dinner. One hour, and two hours, went by, and then Beatrice, in
alarm, took the lantern and courageously braved the blackness of the
wood.
The châlet was in darkness, and the door was locked, but through the
uncurtained glass of the window, she was able to irradiate the
emptiness of its interior. Antony was not there.
But she noticed, with a shudder, that the space usually filled by the
Image was vacant. Then she understood, and with a hopeless sigh went
down the wood again.
Already Antony and Silencieux had found the place where the loneliest
land meets the loneliest sea. Side by side they were sitting on a moonlit

margin of the world, and Antony was singing low to the murmur of the
waves:--
Hopeless of hope, past desire even of thee, There is one place I long for,
A desolate place That I sing all my songs for, A desolate place for a
desolate face, Where the loneliest land meets the loneliest sea.
Green waves and green grasses--and nought else is nigh, But a shadow
that beckons; A desolate face, And a shadow that beckons The desolate
face to the desolate place Where the loneliest sea meets the loneliest
sky.
Wide sea and wide heaven, and all else afar, But a spirit is singing, A