The Trespasser

But she knew the morrow was coming, whether or not, and she cowered down

on his breast. She was wild with fear of the parting and the subsequent

days. They must drink, after tomorrow, separate cups. She was filled

with vague terror of what it would be. The sense of the oneness and

unity of their fates was gone.

Siegmund also was cowed by the threat of separation. He had more

definite knowledge of the next move than had Helena. His heart was

certain of calamity, which would overtake him directly. He shrank away.

Wildly he beat about to find a means of escape from the next day and its

consequences. He did not want to go. Anything rather than go back.

In the midst of their passion of fear the moon rose. Siegmund started to

see the rim appear ruddily beyond the sea. His struggling suddenly

ceased, and he watched, spellbound, the oval horn of fiery gold come up,

resolve itself. Some golden liquor dripped and spilled upon the far

waves, where it shook in ruddy splashes. The gold-red cup rose higher,

looming before him very large, yet still not all discovered. By degrees

the horn of gold detached itself from the darkness at back of the waves.

It was immense and terrible. When would the tip be placed upon the table

of the sea?

It stood at last, whole and calm, before him; then the night took up

this drinking-cup of fiery gold, lifting it with majestic movement

overhead, letting stream forth the wonderful unwasted liquor of gold

over the sea--a libation.

Siegmund looked at the shaking flood of gold and paling gold spread

wider as the night upraised the blanching crystal, poured out farther

and farther the immense libation from the whitening cup, till at last

the moon looked frail and empty.

And there, exhaustless in the night, the white light shook on the floor

of the sea. He wondered how it would be gathered up. 'I gather it up

into myself,' he said. And the stars and the cliffs and a few trees were

watching, too. 'If I have spilled my life,' he thought, 'the unfamiliar

eyes of the land and sky will gather it up again.' Turning to Helena, he found her face white and shining as the empty

moon.