But she knew the morrow was coming, whether or not, and she cowered down
on his breast. She was wild with fear of the parting and the subsequent
days. They must drink, after tomorrow, separate cups. She was filled
with vague terror of what it would be. The sense of the oneness and
unity of their fates was gone.
Siegmund also was cowed by the threat of separation. He had more
definite knowledge of the next move than had Helena. His heart was
certain of calamity, which would overtake him directly. He shrank away.
Wildly he beat about to find a means of escape from the next day and its
consequences. He did not want to go. Anything rather than go back.
In the midst of their passion of fear the moon rose. Siegmund started to
see the rim appear ruddily beyond the sea. His struggling suddenly
ceased, and he watched, spellbound, the oval horn of fiery gold come up,
resolve itself. Some golden liquor dripped and spilled upon the far
waves, where it shook in ruddy splashes. The gold-red cup rose higher,
looming before him very large, yet still not all discovered. By degrees
the horn of gold detached itself from the darkness at back of the waves.
It was immense and terrible. When would the tip be placed upon the table
of the sea?
It stood at last, whole and calm, before him; then the night took up
this drinking-cup of fiery gold, lifting it with majestic movement
overhead, letting stream forth the wonderful unwasted liquor of gold
over the sea--a libation.
Siegmund looked at the shaking flood of gold and paling gold spread
wider as the night upraised the blanching crystal, poured out farther
and farther the immense libation from the whitening cup, till at last
the moon looked frail and empty.
And there, exhaustless in the night, the white light shook on the floor
of the sea. He wondered how it would be gathered up. 'I gather it up
into myself,' he said. And the stars and the cliffs and a few trees were
watching, too. 'If I have spilled my life,' he thought, 'the unfamiliar
eyes of the land and sky will gather it up again.' Turning to Helena, he found her face white and shining as the empty
moon.