Helena stood still to consider the road. He held out his hand before him. It was as 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, nearer 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
