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.