“Come away, dear!” she repeated, drawing him slowly to the path.
“You are not afraid?” he asked.
“Not afraid, no….” Her voice had that peculiar, reedy, harsh quality that made him shiver.
“It is too easy a way,” he said satirically.
She did not take in his meaning.
“And five days of our own before us, Siegmund!” she scolded. “The mist is Lethe. It is enough for us if its spell lasts five days.”
He laughed, and took her in his arms, kissing her very closely.
They walked on joyfully, locking behind them the doors of forgetfulness.
As the sun set, the fog dispersed a little. Breaking masses of mist went flying from cliff to cliff, and far away beyond the cliffs the western sky stood dimmed with gold. The lovers wandered aimlessly over the golf-links to where green mounds and turfed banks suggested to Helena that she was tired, and would sit down. They faced the lighted chamber of the west, whence, behind the torn, dull-gold curtains of fog, the sun was departing with pomp.
Siegmund sat very still, watching the sunset. It was a splendid, flaming bridal chamber where he had come to Helena. He wondered how to express it; how other men had borne this same glory.
“What is the music of it?” he asked.
She glanced at him. His eyelids were half lowered, his mouth slightly open, as if in ironic rhapsody.
“Of what, dear?”
“What music do you think holds the best interpretation of sunset?”
