Her smile and her wonderful eyes were his beacon light. He rose to his feet and took her hand. And away they strayed from the rest of the crowd, far away over green lawns, emerald in the moonlight, with, here and there, the dark shadow of a cypress falling across the silvery brightness of their path. Little by little the gardens were deserted. Fainter and fainter came the sounds of lutes and harps. The shadows of the grove now encompassed them, as silently they strode side by side. "This is my Buen Retiro," she spoke at last. "Here we may rest--for awhile--far from the world." They entered the rose-bower, a wilderness, blossoming with roses and hyacinths and fragrant shrubs--a very paradise for lovers.-- The bells of a remote convent began to chime. They smote the silence with their silvery peals. The castle of Avalon lay dark in the distance, shadowy against the deep azure of the night sky. When the chimes of the Angelus had died away, she spoke. "How wonderful is this peace!" Her tone brought a sudden chill to his heart. As she moved forward, he dropped his wealth of flowers and held out his hands entreatingly. "Dearest Hellayne," he said, "tarry but a little longer--" She seemed to start at his words, and leaned over the back of the stone bench, which was covered with climbing roses. And suddenly under this new light, sad and silent, she seemed no longer his fair companion of the afternoon, all youth, all beauty, all light. Motionless, as if shadowed by some dire foreboding, she stood there and he dared not approach. Once he raised his hand to take her own. But something in her eyes caused the hand to fall as with its own weight. He could not understand what stayed him, what stayed the one supreme impulse of his heart. He did not understand what checked the words that hovered on his lips. Was it the clear pure light of the eyes he loved so well? Was it some dark power he wot not of? At last he broke through his restraint. "Hellayne--" he whispered low. "Hellayne--I love you!" She did not move. There was a deep silence. Then she answered. "Oh, why have you said the word!" What did she mean? He cried, trembling, within himself. And now he was no longer in the moonlit rose-bower in the gardens of Avalon, but in a dense forest. The trees meeting overhead made a night so black, that he saw nothing, not even their gnarled trunks. Hellayne was standing beside him. A pale moonbeam flickered through the interwoven branches. She pointed to the castle of Avalon, dim in the distance. He made a quick forward step to see her face. Her eyes were very calm. "Let us go, Tristan!" she said. "My answer first," he insisted, gazing longingly, wistfully into the eyes that held a night of mystery. "You have it," she said calmly. "It was no answer," he pleaded, "from lover to lover--" "Ah!" she replied, in her voice a great weariness which he had never noted before. "But here are neither loves nor lovers.--Look!" And he looked.