“Then Mary will,” he murmured half to himself.
Ruth nodded, and told him, “Yes, yes; she will. Please, never fear.”
For a little while he was silent, while she spoke to him hungrily and tenderly, as a mother might have spoken; and her arms round him seemed to feel the man slipping away. She was weeping terribly; and he put up one hand and brushed her eyes.
“Don’t cry,” he bade her. “It’s all right, don’t cry.”
“I can’t help it. I don’t want to help it. Oh, if there was only anything I could do.”
He smiled faintly; and his words were so husky she could scarcely hear.
“Go to John,” he said.
She held him closer. “Please——”
“Please go to John,” he urged again.
She still held him, but her arms relaxed a little. She looked up at John, and saw the young man standing there beside her. And a picture came back to her—the picture of John throwing himself against the red bull’s flank, blinding it, urging it away. His voice had been so gentle, and sure, and strong. She herself in that moment had burned with hate of the bull. Yet there had been no hate in John, nothing but gentleness and strength.