"I have dared to
hope that perhaps Wonder, as she was the symbol of our coming together,
was taken away just at this time because we were being drawn apart.
Perhaps it was to save our love that little Wonder died--"
Antony looked at Beatrice; half as one looks at a child, and half as one
might look at an angel.
"Beatrice," he said tenderly, "you believe in God."
"All women believe in God," answered Beatrice.
"Yes," said Antony musingly, and with no thought of irony, "it is that
which makes you women."
CHAPTER XVII
ANTONY ALONE ON THE HILLS
But although Beatrice might forgive Antony, from himself came no
forgiveness. He hid his remorse from her, sparing the mother-wound in
her heart--but always when he was walking alone he kept saying to
himself: "I have lost our little Wonder. I killed our little Wonder."
One day he climbed up the highest hill within reach, and there leaned
into the enormous silence, that he might cry it aloud for God to hear--
God!--poor little Beatrice, what God was there to hear! To look at
Beatrice one might indeed believe in God--and yet was it not Beatrice
who had made God in her own image? Was not God created of all pure
overflows of the human soul, the kind light of human eyes that not all
the suffering of the world can exhaust, the idealism of the human spirit
that not all the infamies of natural law can dismay?
Nevertheless, Antony confessed himself to God upon the hills, not indeed
as one seeking pardon, but punishment.
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