Beauty indeed should be theirs—­the Beauty of Nature and Love; no more the vampire’s beauty of Art.

It was strange to each how their souls lightened as the valleys of the world folded away behind them, and the simple slopes mounted in their path.  In that pure unladen air which so exhilarated their very bodies, there seemed some mysterious property of exhilaration for the soul also.  One might have dreamed that just to breathe on those heights all one’s days would be to grow holy by the more cleansing power of the air.  With such bright currents ever running through the brain, surely one’s thoughts would circle there white as stones at the bottom of a spring.

“O Antony,” said Beatrice, “why were we so long in finding the hills?”

“We found them once before, Beatrice—­do you remember?”

“Yes!  You have not forgotten?” said Beatrice, with the ray of a lost happiness in her eyes—­lost, and yet could it be dawning again?  There was a morning star in Antony’s face.

“And then,” said Antony, “we went into the valley—­the Valley of Beauty and Death.”

Beatrice pressed his hand and looked all her love at him for comfort.  He knew how precious was such a forgiveness, the forgiveness of a mother heart broken for the child, which he, directly or indirectly, had sacrificed,—­directly as he and Wonder alone knew, indirectly by taking them with him into the Valley of Beauty.

“Ah, Beatrice, your love is almost greater than I can bear.  I am not worthy of it.  I never shall be worthy.  There is something in the love of a woman like you to which the best man is unequal.  We can love—­and greatly—­but it is not the same.”

“We went into the valley,” he cried, “and I lost you your little Wonder—­”

“Our little Wonder,” gently corrected Beatrice.  “We found her together, and we lost her together.  Perhaps some day we shall find her together again—­”

“And do you know, Antony,” Beatrice continued, “I sometimes wonder if her little soul was not sent and so taken away all as part of a mission to us, which in its turn is a part of the working out of her own destiny.  For life is very mysterious, Antony—­”

“Alas!  I had forgotten life,” answered Antony with a sigh.

“Yes, dear,” Beatrice went on, pursuing her thought.  “I have dared to hope that perhaps Wonder, as she was the symbol of our coming together, was taken away just at this time because we were being drawn apart.  Perhaps it was to save our love that little Wonder died—­”

Antony looked at Beatrice; half as one looks at a child, and half as one might look at an angel.

“Beatrice,” he said tenderly, “you believe in God.”

“All women believe in God,” answered Beatrice.

“Yes,” said Antony musingly, and with no thought of irony, “it is that which makes you women.”

CHAPTER XVII