om
the woodside, and mocked her with the same cry: "Death is coming! Death
is coming!"

Silencieux! Ah, how happy they had been before the coming of
Silencieux! How frail is our happiness, how suddenly it can die! One
moment it seems built for eternity, marble-based and glittering with
towers,--the next, where it stood is lonely grass and dew, not a stone
left. Ah, yes, how happy they had been; and then Antony by a heartless
chance had seen Silencieux, and in an instant their happiness had been
at an end for ever. Only a glance of the eyes and love is born, only a
glance of the eyes, and alas! love must die.

A glance of the eyes and all the old kindness is gone, a glance of the
eyes, and from the face you love the look you seek has died out for
everlasting.

"O Antony! Antony!" moaned Beatrice, as she wandered alone in those dank
autumn lanes, "if you would only come back to me for one short day, come
back with the old look on your face, be to me for a little while as you
once were, I think I could gladly die--"

Die! A tattered flower caught her glance, shaking chilly in the damp
wind, and once more she heard the whisper, "Death is coming!"

Near where she walked, stood, in the midst of a small meadow overgrown
with nettles, the blackened ruin of a cottage long since destroyed by
fire. On the edge of the little sandy lane, perilously near the feet of
the passer-by, was its forgotten well, the mouth choked with weeds and
briers.

In her absorption Beatrice had almost walked into it. Now she parted the
bushes and looked down. A stone fell as she looked, making a sepulchral
echo. What a place to hide one's sorrow in! No one would think of
looking there. Antony might think she had gone away, or he might drag
the three black ponds, but here it was unlikely any one would come. And
in a little while--a very little while--Antony would forget, or
sometimes make himself happy with his unhappiness.

Ah! but Wonder! No, if Antony needed her no more, Wonder did. She must
stay for Wonder's sake. And perhaps, who could say, Antony might yet
need her, might come to her some day and say "Beatrice," with the old
voice. To be really necessary to Antony again, if only for one little
hour,--yes! she could wait and suffer for that.

CHAPTER XIII

THE HUMAN SACRIFICE

The valley was an ill place even for the body, a lair of rheums and
agues; and disembodied fevers waited in wells for the sunk pail. For the
valley was v