midnight
Was there some mysterious life in the thing , after all ? Why should these indefinite forebodings come over him as he looked at her ! -- But he was growing as childish as Beatrice . Surely midnight , a dark wood , a lantern , and a death-mask , with two owls whistling to each other across the valley , were enough to account for any number of forebodings ! But Antony shivered , for all that , as he locked the door and hastened back again down the wood . Antony had not written a poem to his wife since their little girl Wonder had been born , now some four years ago . 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 .