to herself, pleased with her fancy of wayward little dreams playing with
weak hands and feet among the large, solemn-sleeping cattle. This was
the first time, she told herself, that she had ever been out among the
grey-frocked dreams and white-armed fairies. She imagined herself lying
asleep in her room, while her own dreams slid out down the moonbeams.
She imagined Siegmund sleeping in his room, while his dreams, dark-eyed,
their blue eyes very dark and yearning at night-time, came wandering
over the grey grass seeking her dreams.

So she wove her fancies as she walked, until for very weariness she was
fain to remember that it was a long way--a long way. Siegmund's arm was
about her to support her; she rested herself upon it. They crossed a
stile and recognized, on the right of the path, the graveyard of the
Catholic chapel. The moon, which the days were paring smaller with
envious keen knife, shone upon the white stones in the burial-ground.
The carved Christ upon His cross hung against a silver-grey sky. Helena
looked up wearily, bowing to the tragedy. Siegmund also looked, and
bowed his head.

'Thirty years of earnest love; three years' life like a passionate
ecstasy-and it was finished. He was very great and very wonderful. I am
very insignificant, and shall go out ignobly. But we are the same; love,
the brief ecstasy, and the end. But mine is one rose, and His all the
white beauty in the world.'

Siegmund felt his heart very heavy, sad, and at fault, in presence of
the Christ. Yet he derived comfort from the knowledge that life was
treating him in the same manner as it had treated the Master, though his
compared small and despicable with the Christ-tragedy. Siegmund stepped
softly into the shadow of the pine copse.