"But that can never be," said Beatrice; "you must accept it, Antony. We shall only meet her again by doing that. The sooner we can say from our hearts 'She is lost here,' the nearer is she to being found in another world. Yes, Antony dear, even Wonder's little shadow must be left behind, if we are to mount together the hills of life."
"My wonderful Beatrice! Yes, the hills of life. No more its woods, but its hills, bathed in a vast and open sunshine. Look around us—how nobly simple is every line and shape! Far below the horizon nature is elaborate, full of fancies,—mazy watercourses, delicate dingles, fantastically gloomy ravines, misshapen woods, gibbering with diablerie; but here how simple, how great, how good she is! There is not a shape subtler than a common bowl, and the colours are alphabetical—and yet, by what taking of thought could she have achieved an effect so grand, at once so beautiful and so holy?"
"Yes, one might call it the good beauty," said Beatrice.
"Yes," continued Antony, perhaps somewhat ominously interested in the subject, "that is a great mystery—the seeming moral meaning of the forms of things. Some shapes, however beautiful, suggest evil; others, however ugly, suggest good. As we look at a snake, or a spider, we know that evil is shaped like that; and not only animate things but inanimate. Some aspects of nature are essentially evil. There are landscapes that injure the soul to look at, there are sunsets that are unholy, there are trees breathing spiritual pestilence as surely as some men breathe it—"
"Do you remember," continued Antony with a smile, which died as he realised he was committed to an allusion best forgotten, "that old twisted tree that stood on the moor near our wood? I often wonder what mysterious sin he had committed—"
"Yes," laughed Beatrice, "he looked a terribly depraved old tree, I must admit—but don't you think that when we have arrived at the discussion of the mysterious sins of trees it is time to start home?"
"Yes, indeed," said Antony gaily, "let us change the subject to the vices of flowers."
From which conversation it will be seen that Antony's mind was still revolving with unconscious attraction around the mystery of Art. Was it some far-travelled sea-wind bringing faint strains from that sunken harp, strains too subtle for the ear, and even unrecognised by the mind?