The Trespasser

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.