“Where can we go to be alone?” he asked. “I must hear what happened. It is that which has been driving me mad.”
“Let us go and walk along the path under the ‘house on the wall,’” she said. “No one will come there and it is sheltered and warm in the sun.”
And there, pacing up and down, she told him, as well as she could, the happenings of the night before.
North ground his teeth. “She would be better dead,” he said. “And yet——” He looked at her, a new horror growing in his haggard eyes, a question——?
“She will not die,” said Ruth. “But don’t you understand, don’t you believe, whether she lives or dies the evil is conquered, is transmuted, is taken in to the Eternal Good?”
“No, I cannot believe,” said North harshly. “I think you are playing with words. It seems to me that only Evil is powerful. If anything survives, it is that.”
Ruth looked at him with very gentle eyes. “Wait,” she said. “Have just a little patience. She will get well, and then you will believe.”
“I cannot believe,” said Roger North. The words fell heavily, like stones. He paced restlessly backwards and forwards, crunching the wet gravel viciously under his feet.
“The house might have been burnt down. You—I suppose you think that was the object?”
“Yes, I think it must have been so. At any rate one of them.”