He looked at her with a certain grimness. “And why didn’t you want to come?”
Again with absolute directness she answered him. “Because I knew how it would hurt you to send me away again.”
He swung away from her and again she heard him groan. “This is well named the place of sacrifice,” he said. “Do you remember the day I first brought you here? I loved you then, and I knew it was hopeless—utterly hopeless. It is more so than ever now. I can’t go on. I won’t go on. This thing has got to stop. God knows I have fought it. You have got to fight it too,—go on fighting till it dies.”
“It will rise again,” she said.
His hands clenched. “I’ve never been beaten yet,” he said.
To which she made no answer, for she knew, as he did, that there is no power in earth or heaven so omnipotent as the power of Love.
They went on together, side by side down that great arena, the gaunt Stones all around them like monstrous idols in a forgotten place of worship. They drew near to the Rocking Stone, and very suddenly Arthur stopped.
He stood before it in utter silence, and she wondered what was passing in his mind. The moonlight shone full upon the face of the Stone. She saw again those strange red streaks of which old Mr. Dermot had told her. But her fear was gone, swallowed up in that which was infinitely greater—her love for the man at her side.
How long they stood thus she did not know. She began to realize that he was bracing himself anew for sacrifice, that he was battling desperately for the mastery against odds such as even he had never faced before. She saw him once more as a gladiator, terrible in his resolution, indomitable as the Stone he faced, invincible so long as the breath remained in his body. His last words kept hammering in her brain with the swing and rhythm of a haunting refrain: “I’ve never been beaten yet—I’ve never been beaten yet.” And through them, faint, thread-like as a far-off echo, she heard another voice—whether of child or angel she knew not: “You’ll find it up by the Stones, where the giant hare-bells grow. It’s the most precious thing in the world, and when you find it, keep it—always—always—always!”
The giant hare-bells! There they grew at the foot of that grim Stone where the child had lain all night, unafraid because God was there. She saw them, pale in the moonlight, and in memory of little Ruth she stooped to gather one.