incomprehensible obsession to her. Yet she was glad, and she smiled in
her heart, feeling triumphant and restored. Yet again, dimly, she
wondered where was the Siegmund of ten minutes ago, and her heart lifted
slightly with yearning, to sink with a dismay. This Siegmund was so
incomprehensible. Then again, when he raised his head and found her
mouth, his lips filled her with a hot flush like wine, a sweet, flaming
flush of her whole body, most exquisite, as if she were nothing but a
soft rosy flame of fire against him for a moment or two. That, she
decided, was supreme, transcendental.

The lights of the little farmhouse below had vanished, the yellow specks
of ships were gone. Only the pier-light, far away, shone in the black
sea like the broken piece of a star. Overhead was a silver-greyness of
stars; below was the velvet blackness of the night and the sea. Helena
found herself glimmering with fragments of poetry, as she saw the sea,
when she looked very closely, glimmered dustily with a reflection
of stars.

_Tiefe Stille herrscht im Wasser
Ohne Regung ruht das Meer ..._

She was fond of what scraps of German verse she knew. With French verse
she had no sympathy; but Goethe and Heine and Uhland seemed to speak
her language.

_Die Luft ist kuehl, und es dunkelt,
Und ruhig fliesst der Rhein._

She liked Heine best of all: