“Wonder, ill!” exclaimed Antony, rising with a start, “I will come at once;” and they went together.

Wonder was lying in her bed, with flushed cheeks and bright yet heavy eyes.

“Wonder, my little Wonder,” said Antony caressingly, as he bent over her.  “Does little Wonder feel ill?”

“Yes, Daddy.  I feel so sick, Daddy.”

“Never mind; she will be better to-morrow.”  But he had noticed how burning hot were her hands, and how dry were her fresh little lips.

“I must go for the doctor at once,” he said to his wife, when they were outside the room.  The father, so long asleep, had sprung awake at the first hint of danger to the little child that in his neglectful way he loved deeply all the time; and, in spite of the danger to Wonder, a faint joy stirred in Beatrice’s heart to see him thus humanly aroused once more.

“Kiss me, Beatrice,” he said, as he set out upon his errand.  “Don’t be anxious, it will be all right.”  It was the first time he had kissed his wife for many days.

The doctor’s was some three miles away across the moor.  It was a bright starlit night, and Antony, who knew the moor well, had no difficulty in making his way at a good pace along the mossy tracks.  Presently he gave a little cry of pain and stood still.

“O God,” he cried, “it cannot be that.  Oh, it cannot.”

At that moment for the first time a dreadful thought had crossed his mind.  Suddenly a memory of that afternoon when he had bade Wonder kiss Silencieux flashed upon him; and once more he heard himself saying:  “Silencieux, I bring you my little child.”

But he had never meant it so.  It had all been a mad fancy.  What was Silencieux herself but a wilful, selfish dream?  He saw it all now.  How could a lifeless image have power over the life of his child?

And yet again, was Silencieux a lifeless image?  And still again, if she were an image, was it not always to an image that humanity from the beginning had been sacrificed?  Yes; perhaps if Silencieux were only an image there was all the more reason to fear her.

When he returned he would go to Silencieux, go on his knees and beg for the life of his child.  Silencieux had been cruel, but she could hardly be so cruel as that.

He drove back across the moor by the doctor’s side.

“I have always thought you unwise to live in that valley,” said the doctor.  “It’s pretty, but like most pretty places, it’s unhealthy.  Nature can seldom be good and beautiful at the same time.”  The doctor was somewhat of a philosopher.

“Your little girl needs the hills.  In fact you all do.  Your wife isn’t half the woman she was since you took her into the valley.  You don’t look any better for it, either.  No, sir, believe me, beauty’s all very well, but it’s not good to live with—­And, by the way, have you had your well looked at lately?  That valley is just a beautiful sewer for the drainage of the hills; a very market-town for all the germs and bacilli of the district.”