"Shall I speak?" she said, with a cruel smile.
"Yes," he besought her again.
"I shall love you no more in this world. The lights are gone out, the
magic faded."
"Silencieux!"
But she spoke no more, and, with those lonely words in his ears, Antony
came out of his dream and heard the rain falling miserably through the
wood.
CHAPTER X
SILENCIEUX WHISPERS
So Antony first knew how cruel could be Silencieux to those who loved
her. Her sudden silences he had grown to understand, even to love.
Always they had been broken again by some wonderful word, which he had
known would come sooner or later. All great natures are full of silence.
Silence is the soil of all passion. But now it was not silence that was
between them, but terrible speech. As with a knife she had stabbed their
love right in its heart. Yet Antony knew that his love could never die,
but only suffer.
During these days he half turned to Beatrice. How kind was her simple
earth-warm affection, after the star-cold transcendentalism in which he
had been living! How full of comfort was her unselfish humanity, after
the pitiless egoism of the divine!
And yet, while it momentarily soothed him, he realised, with a heart sad
for Beatrice as for himself, that it could never satisfy him again.
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