There the wren will sometimes bring her sky-blue eggs for a gift, and the summer wind come sowing seeds of magic to take the fancy of the little one beneath.  Sometimes it shakes the hyacinths like a rattle of silver, and spreads the turf above with a litter of coloured toys.

Here the butterflies are born with the first warm breath of the spring.  All the winter they lie hidden in the crevices of the stone, in the carving of little names, and with the first spring day they stand delicately and dry their yellow wings on the little graves.  There are the honeycombs of friendly bees, and the shelters of many a timid earth-born speck of life no bigger than a dewdrop, mysteriously small.  Radiant pin-points of existence have their palaces on the broad blades of the grasses, and in the cellars at their roots works many a humble little slave of the mighty elements.

Yes, the emperors and the ants of Nature’s vast economy alike love to be kind to the little graves.

CHAPTER XV

SILENCIEUX ALONE IN THE WOOD.

Beatrice’s grief for Wonder was such as only a mother can know.  She had but one consolation,—­the kind sad eyes of Antony.  She had lost Wonder, but Antony had come back again.  Wonder was not so dead as Antony had seemed a month ago.

When they had left Wonder and were back in the house which was now twice desolate, Antony took Beatrice’s hands very tenderly and said:—­

“I have been very wrong all these months.  For a shadow I have missed the lovely reality of a little child—­and for a shadow, my own faithful wife, I have all this time done you cruel wrong.  But my eyes are open now, I have come out of the evil dream that bound me—­and never shall I enter it again.  Let us go from here.  Let us leave this valley and never come back to it any more.”

So it was arranged that they should winter far away, returning only to the valley for a few short days in the spring, and then leave it for ever.  They had no heart now for more than just to fly from that haunted place, and before night fell in the valley they were already far away.

In vain Silencieux listened for the sound of her lover’s step in the wood, for he had vowed that he would never look upon her face again.

CHAPTER XVI

THE FIRST TALK ON THE HILLS

Antony took Beatrice to the high hills where all the year long the sun and the snow shine together.  He was afraid of the sea, for the sea was Silencieux’s for ever.  In its depths lay a magic harp which filled all its waves with music—­music lovely and accursed, the voice of Silencieux.  That he must never hear again.  He would pile the hills against his ears.  Inland and upland, he and Beatrice should go, ever closer to the kind heart of the land, ever nearer to the forgetful silences of the sky, till huge walls of space were between them and that harp of the sea.  Nor in the whisper of leaves nor in the gloom of forests should the thought of Silencieux beset them.  The earth that held least of her—­to that earth they would go; the earth that rose nearest to heaven.