Then he continued vaguely wondering, recalling the sensation of wretched
sickness which sometimes follows drunkenness, thinking of the times when
he had fallen ill.
'But I am not like that,' he said, 'because I don't feel tremulous. I am
sure my hand is steady.' Helena stood still to consider the road. He held out his hand before
him. It was motionless as a dead flower on this silent night.
'Yes, I think this is the right way,' said Helena, and they set off
again, as if gaily.
'It certainly feels rather deathly,' said Siegmund to himself. He
remembered distinctly, when he was a child and had diphtheria, he had
stretched himself in the horrible sickness, which he felt was--and here
he chose the French word--'_l'agonie_'. But his mother had seen and had
cried aloud, which suddenly caused him to struggle with all his soul to
spare her her suffering.
'Certainly it is like that,' he said. 'Certainly it is rather deathly. I
wonder how it is.' Then he reviewed the last hour.
'I believe we are lost!' Helena interrupted him.
'Lost! What matter!' he answered indifferently, and Helena pressed him
tighter, hearer to her in a kind of triumph. 'But did we not come this
way?' he added.
'No. See'--her voice was reeded with restrained emotion--'we have
certainly not been along this bare path which dips up and down.' 'Well, then, we must merely keep due eastward, towards the moon pretty
well, as much as we can,' said Siegmund, looking forward over the down,
where the moon was wrestling heroically to win free of the pack of
clouds which hung on her like wolves on a white deer. As he looked at
the moon he felt a sense of companionship. Helena, not understanding,
left him so much alone; the moon was nearer.
Siegmund continued to review the last hours. He had been so wondrously
happy. The world had been filled with a new magic, a wonderful, stately
beauty which he had perceived for the first time. For long hours he had
been wandering in another--a glamorous, primordial world.
'I suppose,' he said to himself, 'I have lived too intensely, I seem to
have had the stars and moon and everything else for guests, and now
they've gone my house is weak.' So he struggled to diagnose his case of splendour and sickness. He
reviewed his hour of passion with Helena.
'Surely,' he told himself, 'I have drunk life too hot, and it has hurt
my cup. My soul seems to leak out--I am half here, half gone away.
That's why I understand the trees and the night so painfully.' Then he came to the hour of Helena's strange ecstasy over him. That,
somehow, had filled him with passionate grief. It was happiness
concentrated one drop too keen, so that what should have been vivid wine
was like a pure poison scathing him. But his consciousness, which had
been unnaturally active, now was dulling. He felt the blood flowing
vigorously along the limbs again, and stilling has brain, sweeping away
his sickness, soothing him.