U.S.A. TO SILENCIEUX THIS TRAGIC FAIRY-TALE Contents CHAPTER I. SMILING SILENCE II.

BEATRICE FULFILS HER DESTINY The Worshipper of the Image CHAPTER I SMILING SILENCE Evening was in the wood, still as the dreaming bracken, secretive, moving softly among the pines as a young witch gathering simples.

The birds that lived in the wood had broken out into sudden singing as she stole in, hungry for silence, passionate to be alone; and at the foot of every tree she cried "Hush! Hush!" to the bedtime nests.

Then it was that a young man, with a face shining with sorrow, vaulted lightly over the mossed fence and dipped down the green path, among the shadows and the toadstools and the silence.

Antony had loved these things since he was a child,dragonflies with their lamp-like eyes of luminous horn, moths with pall-like wings that filled the world with silence as you looked at them, sleepy as deathloved them with the passion of a Japanese artist who delights to carve them on quaint nuggets of metal.

Smiling Silence, I love you.

Surely it was from no lack of love, this silence, but merely due to the working of what would seem to be a law of the artistic temperament: that to turn a muse into a wife, however long and faithfully loved, is to bid good-bye to the muse.

Once, it was said, when the earth of those parts had been rich in iron, these ponds had driven great hammers,but long before the memory of the oldest cottager they had rested from their labours, and lived only the life of beauty and silence.

Lilies floated in circles about the ponds, like the crowns of sunken queens, and sometimes a bird broke the silence with a frightened cry.

All great natures are full of silence.

Silence is the soil of all passion.

But now it was not silence that was between them, but terrible speech.

" One day he climbed up the highest hill within reach, and there leaned into the enormous silence, that he might cry it aloud for God to hear God!poor little Beatrice, what God was there to hear!

But worst of all was to hear himself saying in the silence of his soul, over and over again without any power to still it, as one is forced sometimes to hear the beating of one's heart: "Silencieux, I bring you my little child.

One day as they were out together she was so conscious of this happiness returned that she could not forbear speaking of itwith an inner feeling that it was better to be happy in silence.

Of our sorrows we can keep silence, but our joys we long to utter.

One of her strange moods of silence had come upon Silencieux, and she lay back in her pillows stonily unresponsive.

Nothing could have impressed us so forcibly as did the frigid silence that characterised the company.

Forgetting that we were without the walls of silence, we expected no greeting; but to our amazement he rose, and, placing himself opposite us, conversed affably and in most excellent English for the rest of the journey.

As soon as it was dark the camp was moved in silence; the oxen were driven a little in advance of the standards.

Don Matteo covered his eyes with his hands, and during several minutes there was silence.

"I wish to ask you a question," he said, after a short silence.

" Gianluca said nothing to this, and again there was a short silence.

A deep silence fell upon them both.

and why such care taken to maintain silence?