So the weeks and months went by for those two upon the hills, and the soul of Antony grew stronger day by day, and his love with it—­and the face of Beatrice was like a bird singing.  At last the spring came, and the snow was no more needed to keep warm the flowers.  With the flowers came the snowdrop-soul of Wonder, and the thoughts of mother and father turned to the place of kind old trees and tender country bells, where in the unflowering November they had laid her.  These dark months the chemic earth had been busy with the little body they loved, and by this time Wonder would be many violets.

“Let us go to Wonder,” they said; “she is awake now.”

So they went to Wonder, and found her surrounded, in her earth cradle, by a great singing of birds, and blossoms and green leaves innumerable.  It was more like a palace than a graveyard, and they went away happy for their little one.

There remained now to take leave of the valley, which indeed looked its loveliest, as though to allure them to remain.  Some days they must stay to make the necessary preparations for their departure.  Among these, in Antony’s mind, the first and most necessary was that destruction of Silencieux which he had promised himself and his wife upon the hills.

The first afternoon Beatrice noted him take a great hammer, and set out up the wood.  She gave him a look of love and trust as he went—­though there was a secret tremor in her heart, for she knew, perhaps better than he, how strong was the power of Silencieux.

But in Antony’s heart was no misgiving, or backsliding.  In those months on the hills he had realised human love, in the love of a true and tender and fairy-like woman, and he knew that no illusions, however specious, were worth that reality—­a reality with all the magic of an illusion.  He gripped the hammer in his hand joyfully, eager to smite featureless the face which had so misled him, brought such tragic sorrow to those he had loved.

Still, for all his unshaken purpose, it was strange to see again the face that had meant so much to him, around which his thoughts had circled consciously or unconsciously all these absent weeks.

Seldom has a face seen again after long separation seemed so disenchanted as Silencieux’s.  Was this she whom he had worshipped, she who had told him in that strange voice of her immortal lovers, she with whom he had sung by the sea, she with whom he had danced those strange dances in the town, she who had whispered low that awful command, she to whom he had sacrificed his little child?

She was just a dusty, neglected cast—­nothing more.

Wonder’s voice came back to him:  “No, Daddy, they tasted of dust”—­and at that thought he gripped the hammer ready to strike.

And yet, even thus, she was a beautiful work of man’s hands, and Antony, hating to destroy beauty, still forbore to strike—­just as he would have shrunk from breaking in pieces a shapely vase.  Then, too, the resemblance to Beatrice took him again.  Crudely to smash features so like hers seemed a sort of mimic murder.  So he still hesitated.  Was there no other way?  Then the thought came to him:  “Bury her.”  It pleased him.  Yes, he would bury her.