As yet the moon was not risen. Helena proposed that they should lie on a tuft of sand in a black cleft of the cliff to await its coming. They lay close together without speaking. Each was looking at a low, large star which hung straight in front of them, dripping its brilliance in a thin streamlet of light along the sea almost to their feet. It was a star-path fine and clear, trembling in its brilliance, but certain upon the water. Helena watched it with delight. As Siegmund looked at the star, it seemed to him a lantern hung 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 attraction for you, or my hold over you, and then you—?” He did not finish. She made the same grievous murmuring noise over him. “It shall not be any more,” she said. “All right,” he replied, “since you decide it.” She clasped him round the chest and fondled him, distracted with pity. “You mustn’t be bitter,” she murmured. “Four days is enough,” he said. “In a fortnight I should be intolerable to you. I am not masterful.” “It is not so, Siegmund,” she said sharply. “I give way always,” he repeated. “And then—tonight!” “Tonight, tonight!” she cried in wrath. “Tonight I have been a fool!” “And I?” he asked. “You—what of you?” she cried. Then she became sad. “I have little perverse feelings,” she lamented. “And I can’t bear to compel anything, for fear of hurting it. So I’m always pushed this way and that, like a fool.” “You don’t know how you hurt me, talking so,” she said. He kissed her. After a moment he said: