As he neared the whitebeam, a gust of wind blew out his lantern, and he stood in the profound darkness of the trees.  While he attempted to relight it, he thought he saw a faint light at the foot of the whitebeam, as of a radiance welling out of the earth; but he dismissed it as fancy.

Then, having relit the lantern, he set the spade into the ground, and speedily removed the soil from the white face below.  As he uncovered it, the wind again extinguished the lantern, and there, to his amazement and terror, was the face of Silencieux shining radiantly in the darkness.  The hole in which she lay brimmed over with light, as a spring wells out of the hillside.  Her face was almost transparent with brightness, and presently she spoke low, with a voice sweeter than Antony had ever heard before.  It was the voice of that magic harp at the bottom of the sea, it was the voice that had told him of her lovers, the voice of hidden music that had cried “Resurgam” through the wood.

“Antony,” she said, “sing me songs of little Wonder.”

And, forgetting all but the magic of her voice, the ecstasy of being hers again, Antony carried her with him to the chalet, and setting her in her accustomed place, gazed at her with his whole soul.

“Sing me songs of little Wonder,” she repeated.

“You bid me sing of little Wonder!” cried Antony, half in terror of this beautiful evil face that drew him irresistibly as the moon, “you, who took her from me!”

“Who but I should bid you sing of Wonder?” answered Silencieux.  “I loved her.  That was why I took her from you, that by your grief she should live for ever.  There is no one but I who can give you back your little Wonder—­no one but I who can give you back anything you have lost.  If you love me faithfully, Antony—­there is nothing you can lose but in me you will find it again.”

Antony bowed his head, his heart breaking for Beatrice—­but who is not powerless against his own soul?

“Listen,” said Silencieux again.  “Once on a time there was a beautiful girl who died, and from her grave grew a wonderful flower, which all the world came to see.  ‘Yet it seems a pity,’ said one, ’that so beautiful a girl should have died.’  ‘Ah,’ said a poet standing by, ’there was no other way of making the flower!’”

And again, as Antony still kept silence in his agony, Silencieux said, “Listen.”

“Listen, Antony.  You have hidden yourself away from me, you have put seas and lands between us, you have denied me with bitter curses, you have vowed to thrust me from your life, you have given your allegiance to the warm and pretty humanity of a day, and reviled the august cold marble of immortality.  But it is all in vain.  In your heart of hearts you love no human thing, you love not even yourself, you love only the eternal spirit of beauty in all things, you love only me.  Me you may sacrifice, your own heart you may deny, in the weakness of human pity for human love; but, should this be, your life will be in secret broken, purposeless, and haunted, and to me at last you will come, at the end—­at the end and too late.  This is your own heart’s voice; you know if it be true.”