them sunk in their own stillness, therefore it was a moment or two before she repeated her singsong, in a little louder tone. He did not listen to her, having forgotten that he had asked her a question.
“Turn your head,” she told him, when she had finished the verse, “and look at the moon.”
He pressed back his head, so that there was a gleaming pallor on his chin and his forehead and a deep black shadow over his eyes and his nostrils. This thrilled Helena with a sense of mystery and magic.
“ ‘Die grosse Blumen schmachten,’ ” she said to herself, curiously awake and joyous. “The big flowers open with black petals and silvery ones, Siegmund. You are the big flowers, Siegmund; yours is the bride-groom face, Siegmund, like a black and glistening flesh-petalled flower, Siegmund, and it blooms in the Zauberland, Siegmund—this is the magic land.”
Between the phrases of this whispered ecstasy she kissed him swiftly on the throat, in the shadow, and on his faintly gleaming cheeks. He lay still, his heart beating heavily; he was almost afraid of the strange ecstasy she concentrated on him. Meanwhile she whispered over him sharp, breathless phrases in German and English, touching him with her mouth and her cheeks and her forehead.
“ ‘Und Liebesweisen tönen’—not to-night, Siegmund. They are all still—gorse and the stars and the sea and the trees, are all kissing, Siegmund. The sea has its mouth on the earth, and the gorse and the trees press together, and they all look up at the moon, they put up their faces in a kiss, my darling. But they haven’t you—and it all centres in you, my dear,
