So, having found a spade, he took her from the wall, and looked from his door into the wood, pondering where her grave should be.  A whitebeam at a little distance made a vivid conflagration of green amid the sombre boles of the pines.  Pinewoods rely on their undergrowth—­bracken and whortleberry and occasional bushes—­for their spring illuminations, and the whitebeam shone as bright in that wood as a lamp in the dark.

“I will bury her beneath the whitebeam,” said Antony, and he carried her thither.

Soon the grave was dug amid the pushing fronds of the young ferns, and taking one long look at her, Antony laid her in the earth, and covered her up from sight.  Was it only fancy that as he turned away a faint music seemed to arise from the ground, forming into the word “Resurgam” as it died away?

“It is done,” said Antony to Beatrice.  “But I could not break her, she looked so like you; so I buried her in the wood.”

Beatrice kissed him gratefully.  But her heart would have been more satisfied had Silencieux been broken.

CHAPTER XXI

“Resurgam!”

“Resurgam!”

Had his senses deceived him?  They must have deceived him.  And yet that music at least had seemed startlingly near, sudden, and sweet, as though one should tread upon a harp in the grass.  For the next day or two Antony could not get it out of his ears, and often, like a sweet wail through the wood, he seemed to hear the word “Resurgam.”

Was Silencieux a living spirit, after all,—­no mere illusion, but one of those beautiful demons of evil that do possess the souls of men?

He went and stood by Silencieux’s grave.  It was just as he had left it.  Only an early yellow butterfly stood fanning itself on the freshly turned earth.

Was it the soul of Silencieux?

Cursing himself for a madman, he turned away, but had not gone many yards, when once more—­there was that sudden strain of music and the word “Resurgam” somewhere on the wind.

This time he knew he was not mistaken, but to believe it true—­O God, he must not believe it true.  Reality or fancy, it was an evil thing which he had cast out of his life—­and he closed his ears and fled.

Yet, though he loyally strove to quench that music in the sound of Beatrice’s voice, deep in his heart he knew that the night would come when he would take his lantern and spade, wearily, as one who at length after hopeless striving obeys once more some imperious weakness—­and look on the face of Silencieux again.

Too surely that night came, and, as in a dream, Antony found himself in the dark spring night hastening with lantern and spade to Silencieux’s grave.  It was only just to look on her face again, to see if she really lived like a vampire in the earth; and were she to be alive, he vowed to kill her where she lay—­for into his life again he knew she must not come.