"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.