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Silencieux has risen again." "O Beatrice, Beatrice I would do anything in the world for you but I cannot live without her." From this moment Silencieux took possession of Antony as she had never taken it before. Never had he been so inaccessibly withdrawn into his fatal dream. Beatrice forgot her own bitter sorrow in her fear for him, so wrought was he with the fires that consumed him.
"Until, Antony," and Silencieux lowered her voice to an awful whisper, "until you have made for me the human sacrifice." "The human sacrifice!" "Yes, Antony, all my lovers have done that for me. They were not really mine till then. Some have brought me many such offerings. Antony, when will you bring me the human sacrifice?" "O Silencieux!"
"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."
They pass before me, a fair frieze of unforgotten faces; but most I loved a Roman poet, because, perhaps, he loved so well the memory of her I had loved, and knew so skilfully to make bloom again among his own red roses those petals of passionate ivory which the fishermen of Lesbos had recovered from the sea." "Tell me of your lovers, Silencieux," said Antony again.
"You bid me sing of little Wonder!" cried Antony, half in terror of this beautiful evil face that drew him irresistibly as the moon, "you, who took her from me!" "Who but I should bid you sing of Wonder?" answered Silencieux. "I loved her. That was why I took her from you, that by your grief she should live for ever.
Silencieux had never said them. He kissed her again. "I love you, Silencieux," he said. And then she spoke. "If you love me, Antony," she said, "if you love me " "O what, Silencieux?" he cried, his heart growing cold once more. "Come nearer, Antony. Put your ear to my lips Antony, if you love me the human sacrifice." "O God," he cried, "here in the sunlight It is true "
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. The heart of Beatrice was broken, and there was now no use or place for her in the world.
Reluctantly the child obeyed, and with a shudder she said: "Oh, how cold her lips are, Daddy!" "But were they not sweet, little Wonder?" "No, Daddy, they tasted of dust." And as Antony had lifted her up, he had said in his heart: "Silencieux, I bring you my little child."
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.
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.
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