"
Exalted above the earth with the joy of Silencieux's words, Antony
pressed his lips to hers in an ecstasy, and vowed his life and all
within it inviolably to her.
CHAPTER VIII
A STRANGE KISS FOR SILENCIEUX
One hot August afternoon Antony took Silencieux with him to a
bramble-covered corner of the dark moor which bounded his little wood. A
ruined bank soaked with sunshine, a haunt of lizards, a catacomb of
little lives that creep and run and whisper, made their seat.
Silencieux's face, out there under the open sky and in the full blaze of
the sun, at once lost and gained in reality; gained by force of a
contrast which accentuated while it limited her, lost by opposition to
the great faces of earth and sky. Her life, so concentrated, so
self-absorbed, seemed more of an essence, potently distilled, compared
with this abounding ichor of existence, that audibly sang in brimming
circulation through the veins of this carelessly immortal earth.
For some moments of self-conscious thought she shrank into a symbol,--a
symbol of but one of the elements of the mighty world.
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