AT THE RISING OF THE MOON

But a week or two more, and Beatrice's prophecy had progressed so far
towards fulfilment, that Antony was going about the woods and the moors
saying over to himself the name he had found for the Image, as we saw in
the first chapter; and his love for Silencieux, begun more or less as a
determined self-illusion, grew more and more of a reality. Every day new
life welled into Silencieux's face, as every day life ebbed from the
face of Beatrice, surely foreseeing the coming on of what she had
feared. For the love he gave to Silencieux Antony must take away from
Beatrice, from whom as the days went by he grew more and more withdrawn.

It was true that the long lonely days which he spent in the wood bore
fruit in a remarkable productiveness. Never had his imagination been so
enkindled, or his pen so winged. But this very industry, the proofs of
which he would each evening bring down the wood for that fine judgment
of Beatrice's, which, in spite of all, still remained more to him than
any other praise--this very industry was the secret confirmation for
Beatrice's sad heart. No longer the inspirer, she was yet, she bitterly
told herself, honoured among women as a critic. Her heart might bleed,
and her eyes fill with tears, as he read; but then, as he would say, the
Beauty, the Music! Is it Beautiful? Is it Music? If it be that, no
matter how it has been made! Let us give thanks for creation, though it
involves the sacrifice of our own most tender and sacred feelings. To
set mere personal feelings against Beauty--human tears against an
immortal creation! Did he spare his own feelings? Indeed he did not.

On the night when we first met him bidding good-bye to Silencieux "until
the rising of the moon," he had sat through dinner eating but little,
feverishly and somewhat cruelly gay. Though he was as yet too kind to