They were not really
mine till then. Some have brought me many such offerings. Antony, when
will you bring me the human sacrifice?"
"O Silencieux!"
Antony's heart chilled with terror at Silencieux's words. It was against
this that the voices had warned him as he came up the wood. O that he
had never seen Silencieux more, never heard her poisonous voice again!
As one fleeing before the shadow of uncommitted sin that gains upon him
at each stride, Antony fled from the place, and sought the moors. The
moon was near its setting, and soon the dawn would throw open the
eastern doors of the sky. He walked on and on, waiting, praying for,
stifling for the light; and, at last, with a freshening of the air, and
faint sounds of returning consciousness from distant farms, it came.
High over a lake of ethereal silver welling up out of space, hung the
morning star, shining as though its heart would break, bright as a tear
that must slip down the face of heaven and fall amid the grass.
As Antony looked up at it, his soul escaped from its prison of dark
thought, and such an exaltation had come with the quickening light, that
it seemed as though the body, with little more than pure aspiration to
wing it, might follow the soul's flight to that crystal sphere.
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