'If I had a red face, and went to sleep as soon as I sat comfortable, I

should love it,'he said.

'It amuses me to hear you long to be stupid,' she replied.

'To have a simple, slow-moving mind and an active life is the

desideratum.' 'Is it?' she asked ironically.

'I would give anything to be like that,' he said.

'That is, not to be yourself,' she said pointedly.

He laughed without much heartiness.

'Don't they seem a long way off?' he said, staring at the bucolic scene.

'They are farther than Theocritus--down there is farther than Sicily,

Advertisement..

and more than twenty centuries from us. I wish it weren't.' 'Why do you?' she cried, with curious impatience.

He laughed.

Crossing the down, scattered with dark bushes, they came directly

opposite the path through the furze.

'There it is!' she cried, 'How could we miss it?' 'Ascribe it to the fairies,' he replied, whistling the bird music out of

_Siegfried_, then pieces of _Tristan_. They talked very little.

She was tired. When they arrived at a green, naked hollow near the

cliff's edge, she said: 'This shall be our house today.' 'Welcome home!' said Siegmund.

He flung himself down on the high, breezy slope of the dip, looking out

to sea. Helena sat beside him. It was absolutely still, and the wind was

slackening more and more. Though they listened attentively, they could

hear only an indistinct breathing sound, quite small, from the water

below: no clapping nor hoarse conversation of waves. Siegmund lay with

his hands beneath his head, looking over the sparkling sea. To put her

page in the shadow, Helena propped her book against him and began

to read.

Presently the breeze, and Siegmund, dropped asleep. The sun was pouring

with dreadful persistence. It beat and beat on Helena, gradually drawing

her from her book in a confusion of thought. She closed her eyes

wearily, longing for shade. Vaguely she felt a sympathy with Adam in

'Adam Cast Forth'. Her mind traced again the tumultuous, obscure

strugglings of the two, forth from Eden through the primitive

wildernesses, and she felt sorrowful. Thinking of Adam blackened with

struggle, she looked down at Siegmund. The sun was beating him upon the

face and upon his glistening brow. His two hands, which lay out on the

grass, were full of blood, the veins of his wrists purple and swollen

with heat. Yet he slept on, breathing with a slight, panting motion.

Helena felt deeply moved. She wanted to kiss him as he lay helpless,

abandoned to the charge of the earth and the sky. She wanted to kiss

him, and shed a few tears. She did neither, but instead, moved her

position so that she shaded his head. Cautiously putting her hand on his

hair, she found it warm, quite hot, as when you put your hand under a

sitting hen, and feel the hot-feathered bosom.




Most Popular