up the shadow.  A small fire flickered beneath a quaintly devised mantel, though it was summer—­for the mists crept up the hill at night and chilled the souls of the books.  A great old bureau, with a wonderful belly of mahogany, filled a corner of the room, breathing antique mystery and refinement.  At one end of it, on a small vacant space of wall, hung a cast, apparently the death-mask of a woman, by which the eye was immediately attracted with something of a shock and held by a curious fascination.  The face was smiling, a smile of great peace, and also of a strange cunning.  One other characteristic it had:  the woman looked as though at any moment she would suddenly open her eyes, and if you turned away from her and looked again, she seemed to be smiling to herself because she had opened them that moment behind your back, and just closed them again in time.

It was a face that never changed and yet was always changing.

She looked doubly strange in the evening light, and her smile softened and deepened as the shadows gathered in the room.

Antony came and stood in front of her.

“Silencieux,” he whispered, “I love you, Silencieux.  Smiling Silence, I love you.  All day long on the moors your smile has stolen like a moonbeam by my side—­”

As he spoke, from far down the wood came the gentle sound of a woman’s voice calling “Antony,” and coming nearer as it called.

With a shade of impatience, Antony bent nearer to the image and kissed it.

“Good-bye, Silencieux,” he whispered, “Good-bye, until the rising of the moon.”

Then he passed out on to the little staircase that led down into the wood, and called back to the approaching voice:  “I am coming, Beatrice,”—­’Beatrice’ being the name of his wife.

As he called, a shaft of late sunlight suddenly irradiated the tall slim form of a woman coming up the wood.  She wore no hat, and the sun made a misty glory of her pale gold hair.  She seemed a fairy romantic thing thus gliding in her yellow silk gown through the darkening pines.  And her face was the face of the image, feature for feature.  There was on it too the same light, the same smile.

“Antony,” she called, as they drew nearer to each other, “where in the wide world have you been?  Dinner has been waiting for half-an-hour.”

“Dinner!” he said, laughing, and kissing her kindly.  “Fancy! the High Muses have made me half-an-hour late for dinner.  Beauty has made me forget my dinner.  Disgraceful!”

“I don’t mind your forgetting dinner, Antony—­but you might have remembered me.”

“Do you think I could remember Beauty and forget you?  Yes! you are beautiful to-night, Silen—­Beatrice.  You look like a lady one meets walking by a haunted well in some old Arthurian tale.”

“Hush!” said Beatrice, “listen to the night-jar.  He is worth a hundred nightingales.”

“Yes; what a passion is that!” said Antony, “so sincere, and yet so fascinating too.”