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.

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 liv