In that moment, Antony knew that the love in the soul of man is mated
only with the infinite universe. In no marriage less than that shall it
find lasting fulfilment of itself. No single face, however beautiful, no
single human soul, however vast, can absorb it. Silencieux, Beatrice,
Wonder, himself, all faded away, in a trance-like sense of a stupendous
passion, an august possession. He felt that within him which rose up
gigantic from the earth, and towered into eyries of space, from whence
that morning star seemed like a dewdrop glittering low down upon the
earth.
It was the god in him that knew itself for one brief space, a moment's
awakening in the sleep of fact.
Could a god so great, so awakened, be again the slave of one earthly
face?
Yes, the greater the god, the greater the slave; and so it was that,
falling plumb down from that skyey exaltation, human again with the
weakness that follows divine moments, Antony returned from the morning
star to Silencieux.
Her face was bathed in the delicate early sunlight and looked very pure
and gentle, and he kissed her.
Surely those terrible words had been an illusion of the dark hours.
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