This time he knew he was not 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