at the gate to light someone home. He imagined himself following the thread of the star-track. What was behind the gate?
They heard the wash of a steamer crossing the bay. The water seemed populous in the night-time, with dark, uncanny comings and goings.
Siegmund was considering.
“What was the matter with you?” he asked.
She leaned over him, took his head in her lap, holding his face between her two hands as she answered in a low, grave voice, very wise and old in experience:
“Why, you see, dear, you won’t understand. But there was such a greyish darkness, and through it—the crying of lives I have touched….”
His heart suddenly shrank and sank down. She acknowledged, then, that she also had helped to injure Beatrice and his children. He coiled with shame.
“…A crying of lives against me, and I couldn’t silence them, nor escape out of the darkness. I wanted you—I saw you in front, whistling the Spring Song, but I couldn’t find you—it was not you—I couldn’t find you.”
She kissed his eyes and his brows.
“No, I don’t see it,” he said. “You would always be you. I could think of hating you, but you’d still be yourself.”
She made a moaning, loving sound. Full of passionate pity, she moved her mouth on his face, as a woman does on her child that has hurt itself.
“Sometimes,” she murmured, in a low, grieved confession, “you lose me.”
He gave a brief laugh.
“I lose you!” he repeated. “You mean I lose my
