dewdrop glittering low down upon the
earth.

It was the god in him that knew itself for one brief space, a moment's
awakening in the sleep of fact.

Could a god so great, so awakened, be again the slave of one earthly
face?

Yes, the greater the god, the greater the slave; and so it was that,
falling plumb down from that skyey exaltation, human again with the
weakness that follows divine moments, Antony returned from the morning
star to Silencieux.

Her face was bathed in the delicate early sunlight and looked very pure
and gentle, and he kissed her.

Surely those terrible words had been an illusion of the dark hours.
Silencieux had never said them. He kissed her again.

"I love you, Silencieux," he said. And then she spoke.

"If you love me, Antony," she said, "if you love me--"

"O what, Silencieux?" he cried, his heart growing cold once more.

"Come nearer, Antony. Put your ear to my lips--Antony, if you love
me--the human sacrifice."

"O God," he cried, "here in the sunlight--It is true--"

And, a man with the doom of his nature heavy upon him, he once more went
out into the wood.

CHAPTER XI

WONDER IN THE WOOD

A few days after this, little Wonder, playing about the garden, had
slipped away from her nurse, and, pleased in her little soul at her
cleverness, had found her way up to her father's chalet. Antony was
sitting at his desk, writing, with his door open.

"Daddy," suddenly came a little voice from the bottom of the staircase,
"Daddy, where are you?"

Antony rose and went to the door.

"Come in, little Wonder. Well, it is a clever girl to come all the way
up the wood by herself."

"Yes, Daddy," said the self-possessed little girl, as she toddled into
the chalet and looked round wonderingly at the books and pictures. Then
presently:

"Daddy, what do you do all day in the wood?"

"I make beautiful things."

"Show me some."

Antony showed her a page of his beautiful manuscript.

"Why, those are only words, silly Daddy!"

"But words, little Wonder, are the most beautiful things in the world.
Listen--" and he took the child on his knee. "Listen:--

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

The child had inherited a love of beautiful sound, and, though she
understood nothing of the meaning, the music charmed her, and she
nestled close to her father