'Lost! What matter!' he answered indifferently, and Helena pressed him
tighter, hearer to her in a kind of triumph. 'But did we not come this
way?' he added.

'No. See'--her voice was reeded with restrained emotion--'we have
certainly not been along this bare path which dips up and down.'

'Well, then, we must merely keep due eastward, towards the moon pretty
well, as much as we can,' said Siegmund, looking forward over the down,
where the moon was wrestling heroically to win free of the pack of
clouds which hung on her like wolves on a white deer. As he looked at
the moon he felt a sense of companionship. Helena, not understanding,
left him so much alone; the moon was nearer.

Siegmund continued to review the last hours. He had been so wondrously
happy. The world had been filled with a new magic, a wonderful, stately
beauty which he had perceived for the first time. For long hours he had
been wandering in another--a glamorous, primordial world.

'I suppose,' he said to himself, 'I have lived too intensely, I seem to
have had the stars and moon and everything else for guests, and now
they've gone my house is weak.'

So he struggled to diagnose his case of splendour and sickness. He
reviewed his hour of passion with Helena.

'Surely,' he told himself, 'I have drunk life too hot, and it has hurt
my cup. My soul seems to leak out--I am half here, half gone away.
That's why I understand the trees and the night so painfully.'