CHAPTER IV

THE ALTAR OF APHRODITE

AT the mouth of the tunnel that the waves have worn beneath the neck of stone leading to Tintagel Head, Archelaus and Wilmot paused for a moment. The strata dip towards the outlet, and entrance is gained by stooping low, almost to the ground, while the wind rushes through the chasm from the other side of the head with a breath as icy as the wind from fields of death, even when summer heat broods over the coast. Beyond the entrance the roof springs to an immense height, veined with curious pencilling and rust-stained by the springs from the headland. On the western entrance serpents of hissing green leapt over one another, writhing as they dashed the flakes of spume up to the roof of the cave.

The magic beach beside the headland, where the ninth wave, "full of voices," flung the child of destiny at the feet of Merlin, was a seething hell of tortured waves, rising in walls of translucent emerald at one moment, to fall the next amid the thunder of the rolling pebbles. Wilmot could feel the dank saltness of the air strike through her clothes, but the beat of wind and sea had dashed a fire into her eyes and cheeks; the sea had given her its wine to drink, and the black rocks might have been the stones of Latmos and she a Mænad.

It was impossible to speak, for the roar around them carried every other sound away, and now the waves threw at their feet a mass of weed and wreckage that churned

hideously together. At the sight of it Archelaus caught her hand and drew her away to the entrance, for the outer world of madness was echoed by the turmoil of his mind, and he was afraid of himself with the special fear of those born within the sound of the sea-spray and the calling of the gulls.

Up the rocky pathway of the Knights they pushed their way and, for all the care he took to shelter her, the gusts came perilously near dashing them from the slippery steps. Once within the castle walls there was a lull, and they stood panting together. A stormy sun-flash made the corner warm for the moment.

"We shall never be able to stand on the Head itself," said Wilmot. "We must have been mad to come at all." "Look," he answered, "our city is besieged."

Crouching down, she gazed at the sea below between. two buttresses of masonry. Rays of green flickered across the grey surface, and the sun-gleams caught the golden lichen of the black rocks. All the wild coast glowed with sudden light, and as quickly flashed back again into darkness. Man, the sport of the winds without and of the yet wilder winds of the spirit within this was what Archelaus saw, and the evidence of his senses heightened the storm of his mind.

any way-not even paint it.

"Wonderful, damnable!" he said. "You can't master it And why is any one cursed with a sense of it who cannot put down a single gleam ?” It was the artist's cry as well as the lover's.

Wilmot crouched back in the shelter of the wall. "What do they bring us into the world for," he said— "to fight and lose, and fight and lose?"

"You're tired to-day," said Wilmot, laying her hand on his neck.

The crisp feel of his hair was strange to her, after her

own film of long hair. For a second the woman in her thrilled to the man in him, but only for a moment.

"Born of the will of man," he said, with fierce intensity, looking at the grass-blades; "how dare any one bring a man into the world-to suffer they know not what. That's the unpardonable sin. I'd rather cut off my right hand than have to do with such a crime."

"But some are happy, at least now and then."

"And that some may be happy now and then you gamble in human lives. For if one in a thousand gets a good time, the rest live for years in pain, or at best only freedom from pain."

"How do you know," said Wilmot, in a low voice, "but that the new souls clamour at the gates of life ? "

"Why did you marry him ?" he asked, suddenly turning over to look in her face. "Oh, I know, I shouldn't say it, but it's the house-sparrow and the seamew."

"I told you. I wanted to live."

"And so do I," he whispered, pulling her nearer. A strand of her hair fell across his face as he did so. He whitened to the lips, for he knew now why men gamble with life.

"Up there to-night at Bossiney," he went on hoarsely, "the men will leap the fire, when it burns down, for good luck. They always do it here when there's a bonfire, and the books say it's a remnant of the worship of Bel, the sungod. How old we are, after all, you and I, how old our hearts are. The creeds pass like the men that made them, but underneath the creeds there's still the heart of man."

The murmuring of the waters had passed into his voice, which sounded like that of a man in a trance. She listened almost in awe, for her power over the boy seemed to be turning him into a poet.

"Come," he said, holding out his hand as he rose, for their quiet corner had become hateful.

They stumbled, clinging hand in hand, over the halfhuman mounds that mark the burial-place of bygone ages. They were finally glad to stand within the low walls of St. Juliot's Chapel, and to lean against the square, rude altar.

The Atlantic lay beneath them, flashing into foam where the rollers broke in their mad haste to escape the lash of the wind-flaws. Every headland, as far as eye could reach, sent up columns of spray. The whole world faded into a sea that swirled and buffeted the two together. Their senses seemed caught in an eddy that whirled them closer and closer, as the maelstrom sucks two twigs to the bottom. They stood, half clinging to the altar. For a moment breath and consciousness failed, and Wilmot awoke to find her hand pressed close beneath his on the rough, weathered surface of the altar. His pressure drove her ring into her hand, but she was glad of the pain, for it kept her mind. away from the real fear of the moment-the storm she knew to be beating in the boy's heart.

But a wild elation possessed him now. "The creeds pass like the men that made them," he whispered to her, "but the altars stay, altars to devil or sun-god, to the White Christ or to Aphrodite, who cares?"

His hands pressed hers closer into the stone. "Swear to me with your hand on the altar," he said. But she never knew what the oath was, for the rest of his words died on his lips.

Afterwards her mind would wander into the land of dreams for that oath which they swore.

But no human storm lasts long in such creatures of a day as men and women, and too tired for more emotion, Archelaus loosed his clasp and helped her down the rocky paths from the Head.

And the little god that sets up a stage within us was very merciful to the lad, for while the moonlight faded above St. Piran's, Archelaus lay asleep, seeing visions of things that never could be in fact, since in his dreams Wilmot answered his appeal as she never would in reality, coming, indeed, as the elect lady.

It was a man who woke from that sleep; somewhere in it he had buried his youth. For that has passed from us when we can dream dreams without seeing ourselves as the chief protagonist of the drama. The power of seeing ourselves in fancy heroic and suffering, yet strong, the centre of things, fades slowly, as youth goes, with most; with Archelaus it was gone in a night. He had buried once and for all the "little brother," the man who might have been, the man who in youth had known a flawless woman, and could carry the memory of her into manhood.

It was, moreover, an artist who awoke; somehow, it seemed to Archelaus that he could paint, or rather could see what he wanted to paint, for the first time in his life. For to make an artist thrill with one note only in the gamut of human emotions, is to set him in the way of comprehending all the sounds, which is just where artists differ from other folk, to whom the note they have sung in youth remains their first and last: to whom the charm of a woman gives no clue to the mystery of pain, or to the passion for truth, interprets nothing of the warmth of life in spring, or of the numbness of death in winter.

During the moment after his waking Wilmot was forgotten; Archelaus only wanted to find himself alone before an easel. He was on fire to start, and the day began by a swim and a big breakfast. Then he tried furiously to set down what he knew-the sea-wind, the salt sting, and the human lives. For to-day he was the potential artist; artist, truly, by the gift of God: whether he would ever be actual

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