Now, by this time, the heart of Beatrice was broken.

CHAPTER XXIII

BEATRICE FULFILS HER DESTINY

The heart of Beatrice was broken, and there was now no use or place for her in the world.  Wonder was gone, and Antony was even further away.  She knew now that he would never come back to her.  Never again could return even the illusion of those happy weeks on the hills.  Antony would be hers no more for ever.

There but remained for her to fulfil her destiny, the destiny she had vaguely known ever since Antony had brought home the Image, and shown her how the Seine water had moulded the hair and made wet the eyelashes.

For some weeks now Beatrice had been living on the border of another world.  She had finally abandoned all her hopes of earthly joy—­and to Antony she was no longer any help or happiness.  He had needed her again for a few brief weeks, but now he needed her no more.  His every look told her how he wished her out of his life.  And she had no one else in the world.

But in another world she had her little Wonder.  Lately she had begun to meet her in the lanes.  In the day she wore garlands of flowers round her head, and in the night a great light.  She would go to meet her at night, that the light might lead her steps.

So one night while Antony banqueted strangely with Silencieux, she drew her cloak around her and stole up the wood, to look a last good-bye at him as he sat laughing with his shadows.

“Good-bye, Antony, good-bye,” she cried.  “I had but human love to give you.  I surrender you to the love of the divine.”

Then noting how full of blossom were the lanes, and how sweet was the night air, and smitten through all her senses with the song and perfume of the world she was about to leave, she found her way, with a strange gladness of release, to the Three Black Ponds.

It was moonlight, and the dwarf oak-trees made druid shadows all along the leafy galleries that overhung the pools.  The pools themselves shone with a startling silver—­so hushed, so dreamy was all that surrounded them that there seemed something of an unnatural wakefulness, a daylight observation, in their brilliant surfaces,—­and on them, as last year, the lilies floated like the crowns of sunken queens.  But the third pool lay more in shadow, and by that, as it seemed to Beatrice, a light was shining.

Yes, a light was shining and a voice was calling.  “Mother,” it called, “little Mother.  I am waiting for you.  Here, little Mother.  Here by the water-lilies we could not gather.”

Beatrice, following the voice, stepped along the causeway and sank among the lilies; and as she sank she seemed to see Antony bending over the pond, saying:  “How beautiful she looks, how beautiful, lying there among the lilies!”

* * * * *

On the morrow, when they had drawn Beatrice from the pond, with lilies in her hair, Antony bent over her and said:—­