She was again dressed in spotless saffron coloured robes, her long hair flowing, smooth and glossy, under her veil, the golden crescent glistening on her forehead; her adornments were richer than usual—besides her golden torques she wore emeralds and British pearls on the clasps of her robes; her fingers were almost covered with rings. She was mounted on the same white stallion on which she had made her journey to the plains; here and there he showed blood-stains, and some yellow patches where the flames had caught and singed him.
“And you have lost your horse,” she continued. “I cannot find him anywhere.”
The boy made no answer. He looked at her as he might have looked at an evil spirit.
Now that he faced her for the first time since the dreadful festival, he could not have said whether he hated her or not—all he knew was that his feelings towards her had changed. He could not forget the last dreadful scene in which he had seen her amongst the foremost of those who had offered the human sacrifice. When he had seen her lift her gory knife, uttering fierce incantations meanwhile, he had fled.
“What a fool you were, Cormac,” said Ethne, “to leave just before we divined.”
“Let me forget!” cried Cormac, striking his brow, as though in agony. “Let me forget—I will forget!”
The Druidess looked at him in amazement. His emotion was a further instance of the work of this strange faith, Christianity.
“Unclean!” he cried, and again with the same frenzy, “Unclean, unclean! Oh, Ethne, your religion is cruel—monstrous—devilish!”
“Cruel—monstrous—devilish?” she said, repeating his words slowly. “Why not? All we want is the secrets of the gods—the secrets that concern us.” She was speaking quietly and patiently, because she had found she could only manage him by patience. “Why should we not kill if it will help us to read the future? Is not Death the portal to the Beyond, and if you would have its secrets you must enter by the only door open. We believe that when Death has just descended upon a human being his heart and lungs and inward parts unfold the future to us! And ’tis better if every passion be excited first!”
Cormac shuddered.