Then he came to the hour of Helena's strange ecstasy over him. That,
somehow, had filled him with passionate grief. It was happiness
concentrated one drop too keen, so that what should have been vivid wine
was like a pure poison scathing him. But his consciousness, which had
been unnaturally active, now was dulling. He felt the blood flowing
vigorously along the limbs again, and stilling has brain, sweeping away
his sickness, soothing him.

'I suppose,' he said to himself for the last time, 'I suppose living too
intensely kills you, more or less.'

Then Siegmund forgot. He opened his eyes and saw the night about him.
The moon had escaped from the cloud-pack, and was radiant behind a fine
veil which glistened to her rays, and which was broidered with a
lustrous halo, very large indeed, the largest halo Siegmund had ever
seen. When the little lane turned full towards the moon, it seemed as if
Siegmund and Helena would walk through a large Moorish arch of
horse-shoe shape, the enormous white halo opening in front of them. They
walked on, keeping their faces to the moon, smiling with wonder and a
little rapture, until once mote the little lane curved wilfully, and
they were walking north. Helena observed three cottages crouching under
the hill and under trees to cover themselves from the magic of the
moonlight.

'We certainly did not come this way before,' she said triumphantly. The
idea of being lost delighted her.

Siegmund looked round at the grey hills smeared over with a low, dim
glisten of moon-mist. He could not yet fully realize that he was walking
along a lane in the Isle of Wight. His surroundings seemed to belong to