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.