e 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."

"It is true," moaned Antony.

"Many men and many loves are there in this world," continued
Silencieux, "and each knows the way of his own love, nor shall anything
turn him from it in the end. Here he may go and thither he may turn, but
in the end there is only one way of joy for each, and in that way must
he go or perish. Many faces are fair upon the earth, but for each man is
a face fairest of all, for which, unless he win it, each must go
desolate forever--"

"Face of Eternal Beauty," said Antony, "there is but one face for me for
ever. It is yours."

* * * * *

On the morrow Beatrice saw once more that light in Antony's face which
made her afraid. He had brought with him some sheets of paper on which
were written the songs of little Wonder Silencieux had bidden him sing.
They were songs of grief so poignant and beautiful one grew happy in
listening to them, and Antony forgot