more beautiful than words--or toadstools.

He shuddered as he thought of the loathsome form his decaying fancy had
taken, that morning by the Three Black Ponds. He had filled the small
outstretched hands with Nature's filth and poison. She had asked for
flowers, he had brought her toadstools. Oh, the shame, the crime, the
anguish!

But worst of all was to hear himself saying in the silence of his soul,
over and over again without any power to still it, as one is forced
sometimes to hear the beating of one's heart: "Silencieux, I bring you
my little child."

There were times he heard this so plainly when he was with Beatrice that
he had to leave her and walk for hours alone. Only unseen among the
hills dare he give vent to the mad despair with which that memory tore
him.

Yes, for words--"only words"--he had sacrificed that wonderful living
thing, a child. For words he had missed that magical intercourse, the
intercourse with the mind of a child. How often had she come to him for
a story, and he had been dull and preoccupied--with words; how often
asked him to take her a walk up the lane, but he had been too busy--with
words!

O God, if only she might come and ask again. Now when she was so far
away his fancy teemed with stories. Every roadside flower had its
fairy-tale which cried, "Tell me to little Wonder"--and once he tried
to make believe to himself that Wonder was holding his hand, and looking
up into his face with her big grave eyes, as he told some child's