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 Never had he been so inaccessibly withdrawn into his fatal dream.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. Some days she almost feared for his reason, and she longed to watch over him, but his old irritation at her presence had returned.

As the summer days came on, she would see him disappear through the green door of the wood at morning and return by it at evening; but all the day each had been alone, Beatrice alone with a solitude in which was now no longer any Wonder. The summer beauty gave her courage, but she knew that the end could not be very far away.

One day there had been that in Antony's manner which had more than usually alarmed her, and when night fell and he had not returned, she went up the wood in search of him, her heart full of forebodings. As she neared the chÂlet she seemed to hear voices. No! there was only one voice. Antony was talking to some one. Careful to make no noise, she stole up to the window and looked in. The sight that met her eyes filled her with a great dread. "O God, he is going mad," she cried to herself.

Antony was sitting in a big chair drawn up to the fire. Opposite to him, lying back in her cushions, was the Image draped in a large black velvet cloak. A table stood between them, and on it stood two glasses, and a decanter nearly empty of wine, Silencieux's glass stood untasted, but Antony had evidently been drinking deeply, for his cheeks were flushed and his eyes wild.

He was speaking in angry, passionate, despairing tones. One of her strange moods of silence had come upon Silencieux, and she lay back in her pillows stonily unresponsive.

"For God's sake speak to me," Antony cried. "I love you with my whole heart. I have sacrificed all I love for your sake. I would die for you this instant—yes! a hundred thousand deaths. But you will not answer me one little word—"

But there was no answer.

"Silencieux! Have you ceased to love me? Is the dream once more at an end, the magic faded? Oh, speak—tell me—anything—only speak!" But still Silencieux neither spoke nor smiled.

"Listen, Silencieux," at last cried Antony, beside himself, "unless you answer me, I will die this night, and my blood shall be upon your cruel altar for ever."

As he spoke he snatched a dagger from among some bibelots on his mantel, and drew it from its sheath.

"You are proud of your martyrs," he laughed; "see, I will bleed to death for your sake. In God's name speak."

But Silencieux spoke nothing at all.

Then Beatrice, watching in terror, seeing by his face that he would really kill himself, ran round to the door and broke in, crying, "O my poor Antony!" but already he had plunged the dagger amid the veins of his left wrist, and was watching the blood gush out with a strange delight.

As Beatrice burst in, he looked up at her, and mistook her for Silencieux.

"Ah!" he said, "you speak at last. You love me now, when it is too late—when I am dying."

As he said this his face grew white and he fainted away.

For many days Antony lay unconscious, racked by terrible delirium. The doctor called it brain fever. It was not the common form, he said, but a more dangerous form, to which only imaginative men were subject. It was a form of madness all the more malignant because the sufferer, and particularly his friends, might go for years without suspecting it. The doctor gave the disease no name.

During his illness Antony spoke to Beatrice all the time as Silencieux, but one day, when he was nearly well again, he suddenly turned upon her in enraged disappointment, with a curious harshness he had never shown before, as though the gentleness of his soul had died during his illness, and exclaimed:—"Why, you are not Silencieux, after all!"

"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."

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.